Why No FDD Says What an Owner Makes

No Franchise Disclosure Document states what a franchise owner makes. The FTC Franchise Rule defines a financial performance representation as any statement about "actual or potential sales, income, or profit" of a unit (16 CFR 436.1(e)), permits one only in Item 19 and requires none (16 CFR 436.5(s)). A franchisor that makes one chooses the measure. Nearly every one that does chooses sales, which is what the brand pages on this site print; the rest of the way to an owner's income is not in the filing, and the site does not estimate it.

What Item 19 is allowed to be

The rule gives a franchisor three options. It may make no representation at all, in which case Item 19 is a prescribed sentence saying so. It may report historical results, with the sample, period and measure stated and the basis available on request. Or it may make a projection, with its assumptions. Sales, gross profit, operating income and net profit are all permitted measures; owner compensation is not named anywhere in the rule. So "how much does an owner make" is a question the document was never required to answer, and in the filings on this site none does.

Most franchisors file sales

McDonald's 2026 FDD reports a median annual sales volume of $3,887,000 across about 12,212 domestic traditional franchised restaurants open at least a year, for calendar 2025 (Item 19, pages 34 to 36). Jersey Mike's reports a median unit volume of $1,305,850 across 2,606 traditional franchised restaurants open more than 360 days in the period to 2025-12-28 (Item 19, pages 50 and 51). Both figures are revenue before rent, labor, cost of goods, royalty and the advertising fund. Neither filing says what is left after those, and the brand page says so under the figure.

What the filing does fix is the franchisor's own share of that revenue. Jersey Mike's royalty is 6.5% of gross receipts and its advertising funds are capped at a combined 6% (Item 6, page 9). On the median $1,305,850 that is $84,880 in royalty and up to $78,351 in advertising, $163,231 together, before any other cost. McDonald's royalty is 5% or 4% of gross sales depending on the circumstances and the advertising contribution is not less than 4% (Item 6, page 10); rent to McDonald's is separate and sales-based. These are the only income-side numbers the filing contains, and they are the franchisor's, not the owner's.

Some file nothing

Subway's 2026 FDD makes no representation: "We do not make any representations about a franchisee's future financial performance or the past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets" (Item 19, page 84). Kumon's says the same (Item 19). For these brands the filing gives no sales figure, let alone a profit figure, and every revenue or income number published for them comes from somewhere other than the franchisor. The brand page prints "No Item 19" and nothing else.

A few file a cost line, and stop short of the owner

A minority of franchisors go past sales. Great Clips's 2026 FDD prints an average operating cash flow statement for 2,376 reporting salons open the whole of 2025 under one owner: average sales of $422,283, total expenses of 80.23% of sales, and operating cash flow of $83,504, or 19.77%, with a median of $75,896 (Item 19, pages 50 to 57). McDonald's prints operating income before occupancy costs at three sales levels, $732,000 at $3.0 million of sales rising to $864,000 at $3.4 million, from 11,512 independent franchisee traditional restaurants, and states that the figure excludes rent, royalty, depreciation, interest and taxes (Item 19, pages 34 to 36).

Penn Station's unit financial data gives controllable costs, overhead and EBITDA for 317 franchised restaurants open all of 2025 (Item 19, pages 61 to 64). Clean Eatz gives a cost breakdown down to EBITDA less owner salary for 92 franchised cafés open at least eighteen months, with a category average of $128,312 (Item 19, pages 43 to 45). Each of these is a franchisor-defined line that leaves something out: occupancy, debt service, depreciation, the owner's own pay, or taxes. None is what the owner takes home, and the brand page records that the table exists rather than reading an owner figure off it.

Where profit does appear: as the franchisor's fee

The one place net profit is a stated quantity in some filings is Item 6, as the base of a fee. Chick-fil-A's franchise fee is a base of up to 15% of gross receipts plus an additional fee of 50% of the Operator's net profit, monthly (2026 FDD, Item 6, pages 23, 29 and 30). That tells a reader how profit is shared, not how large it is; the same FDD's Item 19 reports a median of $9,087,673 in sales across 2,302 Operator restaurants for calendar 2025 (pages 83 and 84) and no profit figure.

The worked example on every brand page

Each brand page now carries a section headed with the question. It states that the filing does not answer it, prints the sales figure if the franchisor gave one with its measure, sample and period, names any cost-side table the franchisor filed, and shows the one piece of arithmetic the filing supports: the royalty and advertising percentages from Item 6 applied to the Item 19 median. For McDonald's that is 5% of $3,887,000, or $194,350 a year in royalty (Item 6, page 10, on the Item 19 median), a figure that describes the franchisor's income from a median unit and nothing about the owner's.

What this guide does not cover

It does not estimate, model or infer an owner's income for any brand, and it does not say what a "good" margin is. It does not cover the Item 19 projections a franchisor may make for a specific site, or the supplemental representations a franchisor may give a particular prospect outside the FDD. Where the filing is silent, the brand page is silent too.

The brand index shows which brands have a single Item 19 figure, which have one in another form, and which have none; each brand page, for example McDonald's or Subway, carries the section described above.

Sources

• 16 CFR 436.1, definitions (financial performance representation)
• 16 CFR 436.5(s), Item 19: Financial performance representations; 436.5(f), Item 6: Other fees
• The 2026 FDDs of McDonald's, Jersey Mike's, Subway, Kumon, Great Clips, Penn Station, Clean Eatz and Chick-fil-A, as filed with Wisconsin DFI, Items 6 and 19 at the pages cited; each brand page links its filing record at Wisconsin DFI Franchise Search.

This guide is informational only. It is not financial, legal or investment advice, and Unitnomics is not affiliated with any franchisor, state regulator or the FTC. It reports what a franchisor filed and what the site computed from it; it does not advise on whether to buy a franchise.

Last reviewed: November 2026 · Against 16 CFR 436.1 and 436.5(s), and the 2026 FDDs cited below.