Food & Beverage

Culver's Franchise

A Midwest-rooted quick-service chain known for ButterBurgers and frozen custard, franchised as full-service, drive-thru restaurants. The first Culver's restaurant opened July 18, 1984 in Sauk City, Wisconsin; the franchisor, originally incorporated in 1987, converted from a Wisconsin corporation to an LLC in October 2017 and has offered franchises since 1990. Franchised unit count grew every year of the FDD's three-year window, crossing 1,000 franchised restaurants in 2025.

Opening more locationsFounded 1984HQ: Prairie du Sac, WI

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 Culver's'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

$65,000

Total to open

$3,406,350–$10,294,100

Ongoing royalty

4% of gross sales

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.

Your estimated annual revenue

Defaulted to a rough food & beverage industry average, not a figure from Culver's's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.

Years of ownership

Total cost of ownership over 5 years

$3,606,350 – $10,494,100

Startup investment

$3,406,350–$10,294,100

Royalty per year (4%)

$40,000

Total royalty, 5yr

$200,000

When would you break even?

Revenue alone doesn't tell you this -- it depends on what's left after rent, labor, and everything else. Culver's'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.

Estimated profit margin (% of revenue)

%≈ $80,000/year

Defaulted to a general food & beverage industry benchmark, not a figure from Culver's'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

42.6–128.7 years

Weigh that payback period against what you already know: Culver's 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 Culver's 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

Growing

From Item 20 of Culver's's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.

+51

+53

+44

202320242025

Year	Franchised units, start	Franchised units, end	Net change
2023	886	937	+51
2024	937	990	+53
2025	990	1,034	+44

Most recent year (2025): gained 44 franchised units, ending the year at 1,034 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)

Item 11: franchisees may terminate penalty-free any time before their fifth week of the Franchisee Development Program (with a 75% initial-fee refund), and Culver's provides up to two free preliminary conceptual site designs before a $500 fee applies to a fifth-or-later site design.

Territory protection (Item 12)

Item 12: a 3-mile-radius Designated Territory (smaller in dense urban areas or where a physical/perceived barrier exists) within which Culver's won't operate or franchise another full-service restaurant, though it reserves the right to license Non-Traditional Locations (malls, airports, stadiums, etc.) inside or outside that territory at any time.

Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)

Item 17: 15-year term from restaurant opening (or 12 months after signing, if earlier), with the right to one additional 10-year renewal term subject to remodeling, a renewal fee, and then-current qualification requirements.

How Culver's compares to other Food & Beverage franchises

Across the 50 food & beverage franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $882,585–$2,162,912, with royalties averaging around 5.6% of gross sales (based on the 46 of them that charge a flat %-of-revenue royalty).

Dave's Hot Chicken

$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

Chick-fil-A

$317,521–$3,463,155 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Penn Station

$507,500–$858,750 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Nekter Juice Bar

$243,155–$647,160 · 6% royalty

Jimmy John's

$366,200–$733,500 · 6% royalty

Sonic Drive-In

$1,485,200–$2,522,900 · 5% royalty

Papa John's

$281,485–$890,267 · 5% royalty

Hungry Howie's Pizza & Subs

$238,982–$697,322 · 5.5% royalty

Jack in the Box

$1,909,500–$4,041,500 · 5% royalty

Wendy's

$1,523,957–$2,992,000 · 4% royalty

Marco's Pizza

$286,477–$811,186 · 5.5% royalty

Pizza Hut

$846,000–$2,130,000 · 6% royalty

Chicken Salad Chick

$777,000–$998,500 · 5% royalty

Teriyaki Madness

$392,667–$1,121,405 · 6% royalty

Cold Stone Creamery

$390,675–$680,775 · 6% royalty

Scooter's Coffee

$1,163,650–$1,345,750 · 6% royalty

Nothing Bundt Cakes

$475,200–$994,100 · 6% royalty

Five Guys

$977,850–$1,375,750 · 6% royalty

Tim Hortons

$427,500–$3,312,500 · 6% royalty

7 Brew

$940,500–$2,283,500 · non-%-of-revenue royalty

Swig

$608,400–$1,718,000 · 7% royalty

Dairy Queen

$1,516,200–$2,543,050 · 4% royalty

Paris Baguette

$727,515–$1,860,550 · 5% royalty

Jollibee

$1,614,568–$4,589,057 · 5% royalty

Smoothie King

$329,850–$683,215 · 6% royalty

Keep going

Culver's and Twin Peaks are both food & beverage franchises; Twin Peaks's total investment starts about $447,350 lower than Culver's's. Twin Peaks Franchise
Culver's and KFC are both food & beverage franchises; KFC's total investment starts about $1,298,775 lower than Culver's's. KFC Franchise

Where this came from: MN CARDS file 4184, Clean FDD issued March 30, 2026, filed 3/30/2026, effective 4/13/2026. Culver Franchising System, LLC (California DFPI entity id 413473, legal name used here) only files a Net Worth/Experience Exemption notice with California DFPI (most recently effective 4/25/2026, no FDD attached), confirming MN as the right source. Item 5: $65,000 standard initial franchise fee ($55,000 for a qualifying existing franchisee's additional restaurant, $45,000 under the Mentoring Program) -- the parser's $45,000-$65,000 cover-page range spans these tiers rather than one fee, so this entry uses the standard $65,000. Item 6: the royalty is labeled "Service Fee" in Item 6's fee table (4% of Gross Sales) though the Franchise Agreement exhibit calls the same fee the "Continuing Royalty Fee" -- a labeling mismatch worth flagging; Advertising Fee is 2.5% of Gross Sales, with an additional optional Cooperative Advertising charge of up to 4%. Item 7 Total: $3,406,350-$10,294,100. Item 20 Table No. 1 confirmed. You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2026-04-13. 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.