Food & Beverage
Chick-fil-A Franchise
A chicken-sandwich quick-service chain built on a genuinely different franchise structure from every other entry in this dataset: Chick-fil-A itself owns or leases the real estate and equipment for every Restaurant, requires only a $10,000 initial franchise fee, and takes no percentage-of-sales royalty -- instead charging monthly rent set by a site-specific formula and structuring franchisees ("Operators") more like salaried, profit-sharing restaurant managers than conventional owner-operators. Founded by Truett Cathy, who opened the original Dwarf House restaurant in Hapeville, Georgia in 1946 before developing the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich and format in 1967; the corporate franchisor, Chick-fil-A, Inc., was formed in 1964. Franchised Restaurant count grew every year shown, from +163 in 2023 to +171 in 2025. This entry covers the Operator Program (the company's standard, traditional-restaurant franchise) -- a separate License Program FDD exists for licensed/non-traditional units with different economics.
Every franchisor has to file a document called an FDD before they can legally sell you a franchise. Buried in it are the two things a sales rep won't volunteer: what you'll actually spend to open, and whether existing locations are opening or closing. That's what's below, pulled straight from Chick-fil-A's own filing.
What it costs to open
From the filing's investment breakdown -- not a "starting at" number a sales rep quoted you.
Franchise fee
$10,000
Total to open
$317,521–$3,463,155
Ongoing royalty
Not a %-of-revenue fee -- see FDD
What you'd actually spend, over time
The upfront cost is only part of it. Plug in what you expect a location to bring in, and see the real total once royalties over a few years are added on top.
Defaulted to a rough food & beverage industry average, not a figure from Chick-fil-A's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.
Startup investment (royalty not included -- see below)
$317,521 – $3,463,155
Chick-fil-A doesn't charge a straightforward percentage-of-revenue royalty -- its FDD describes a different ongoing-fee structure instead. That cost isn't included in the total above; check the FDD directly for the real terms before using this figure to compare against other franchises.
When would you break even?
Revenue alone doesn't tell you this -- it depends on what's left after rent, labor, and everything else. Chick-fil-A's FDD doesn't disclose a reliable profit figure (most franchisors don't), so this starts from a typical food & beverage profit margin (~8%) and applies it to the revenue you entered above -- adjust the percentage to your own realistic estimate.
Defaulted to a general food & beverage industry benchmark, not a figure from Chick-fil-A's own filing -- this is a starting point to adjust, not a promise about what franchisees actually make.
At that profit, you'd break even in about
4.0–43.3 years
Weigh that payback period against what you already know: Chick-fil-A is opening more locations. A long payback period on a shrinking brand is a very different bet than the same payback period on a growing one.
Is Chick-fil-A actually growing?
Franchisors have to report, every year, how many locations opened, closed, or changed hands. Most franchise sites never show you this. Here it is:
Locations opened vs. closed, by year
GrowingFrom Item 20 of Chick-fil-A's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.
| Year | Franchised units, start | Franchised units, end | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2,331 | 2,494 | +163 |
| 2024 | 2,494 | 2,629 | +135 |
| 2025 | 2,624 | 2,795 | +171 |
Most recent year (2025): gained 171 franchised units, ending the year at 2,795 total.
What you're actually signing up for
The cost and growth numbers above are only part of the picture. These three FDD items are the ones a prospective franchisee tends to weigh most heavily once they're past the sticker price.
Training & ongoing support (Item 11)
Operators must complete Chick-fil-A's required training and generally operate the Restaurant as their primary occupation; ongoing Business Services (e.g., accounting/back-office support) can be required at a Chick-fil-A-set fee ($300/month baseline, subject to change), and optional advertising support/services bill at a $100/hour blended rate if selected.
Territory protection (Item 12)
You will not receive an exclusive territory. You may face competition from other franchisees or licensees, from Restaurants Chick-fil-A owns, or from other channels of distribution Chick-fil-A controls.
Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)
Unusually short-cycle for this dataset: the Franchise Agreement term simply runs to December 31 of the year it's signed (or when the underlying lease expires, if earlier), then renews automatically in one-year increments unless either side gives 30 days' written notice -- a structure closer to an annually-renewing management contract than the 10-25-year terms typical of the other chains here.
How Chick-fil-A compares to other Food & Beverage franchises
Across the 28 food & beverage franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $837,269–$2,125,953, with royalties averaging around 5.7% of gross sales (based on the 25 of them that charge a flat %-of-revenue royalty).
$617,800–$2,170,000 · 6% royalty
Slim Chickens$1,188,900–$4,944,000 · 5% royalty
Ziggi's Coffee$315,830–$2,093,361 · 6% royalty
Crumbl$848,566–$1,472,533 · 8% royalty
Little Caesars$376,500–$1,769,200 · 6% royalty
Jamba$480,850–$941,300 · 6% royalty
Tropical Smoothie Cafe$300,000–$720,500 · 6% royalty
Playa Bowls$188,675–$636,458 · 6% royalty
Kona Ice$114,730–$228,601 · non-%-of-revenue royalty
Firehouse Subs$166,671–$950,351 · 6% royalty
Wingstop$310,400–$1,048,500 · 6% royalty
Jersey Mike's Subs$436,176–$1,162,228 · 6.5% royalty
Dunkin'$532,400–$1,832,500 · 5.9% royalty
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen$1,222,045–$3,923,245 · 5% royalty
Del Taco$1,461,200–$3,313,500 · 5% royalty
Blaze Pizza$757,000–$1,297,100 · 5% royalty
Church's Texas Chicken$1,202,400–$1,886,300 · 5% royalty
MOD Pizza$924,732–$1,220,633 · 5% royalty
Twin Peaks$2,959,000–$5,734,000 · 5% royalty
McDonald's$1,470,500–$2,642,000 · 5% royalty
Subway$263,000–$630,000 · 8% royalty
Taco Bell$1,859,750–$4,312,200 · 5.5% royalty
Domino's Pizza$231,450–$743,500 · 5.5% royalty
KFC$2,107,575–$4,155,000 · 5% royalty
Burger King$2,039,200–$4,730,600 · 4.5% royalty
Penn Station$507,500–$858,750 · non-%-of-revenue royalty
Nekter Juice Bar$243,155–$647,160 · 6% royalty
Keep going
- Chick-fil-A and Ziggi's Coffee are both food & beverage franchises; Ziggi's Coffee's total investment starts about $1,691 lower than Chick-fil-A's. Ziggi's Coffee Franchise
- Chick-fil-A and Wingstop are both food & beverage franchises; Wingstop's total investment starts about $7,121 lower than Chick-fil-A's. Wingstop Franchise
Where this came from: Chick-fil-A only files a Net Worth/Experience Exemption notice, not a full FDD, with California DFPI, so this entry is sourced from Minnesota's CARDS registry instead: Clean FDD issued March 31, 2026 (MN File No. 7464, filed 4/23/2026, effective in Minnesota 5/15/2026), Operator Program FDD. Item 5: $10,000 initial franchise fee ($5,000 of which is held as a refundable working-capital deposit, reconciled at termination/non-renewal). Item 6: no percentage-of-sales royalty is charged -- instead, Chick-fil-A (which owns or leases the Restaurant's real estate) charges monthly Rent of $3,500-$100,655 per a site-specific formula, functionally the equivalent revenue mechanism McDonald's uses; the Advertising Fund contribution can run 0%-3.25% of Gross Receipts but has been set to 0% as company policy since June 1989 (subject to change). Item 7: $317,521-$3,463,155 TOTAL, which includes the $10,000 initial fee plus opening inventory, first month's rent/equipment lease, insurance, and additional working-capital funds -- Chick-fil-A funds essentially all fixed-asset costs itself rather than requiring the Operator to. Item 20 Table 1 franchised/company-owned Restaurant rows above (a separate table in the same FDD tracks 395-425 Licensed Units over the same period, not included in these figures). Item 19 includes a financial performance representation. You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2026-05-15. None of this is investment advice -- get the franchisor's current FDD and talk to a real attorney or accountant before you sign anything.
If you see a different unit count elsewhere: franchisors only have to refile their FDD annually, so the numbers here can run 6–18 months behind a franchisor's own real-time marketing claims -- which often aren't independently verified, and sometimes count signed-but-not-yet-open locations. A gap isn't necessarily an error on either side; it's two different snapshots in time from two different sources.