Beauty
European Wax Center Franchise
A specialty waxing-services franchise built around a proprietary Comfort Wax formula and standardized, appointment-driven waxing suites, typically 5 to 7 per location. European Wax Center was founded in 2004; its predecessor entity began offering franchises in 2006, and the current franchisor entity took over the system in an April 2022 asset-backed securitization transaction. Franchised unit count grew every year of the FDD's three-year window, with growth decelerating from +100 units in 2023 to +24 in 2024.
On record with state regulators
The Washington State Attorney General investigated "no-poach" employee non-solicitation provisions in European Wax Center franchise agreements starting September 2018; King County Superior Court approved an Assurance of Discontinuance in September 2019 under which EWC agreed to remove the provision, not enforce it, and notify Washington franchisees, without any fine assessed.
Disclosed in the FDD's litigation section (Item 3)
Item 3 discloses a 2021 arbitration in which a terminated Florida franchisee alleged wrongful termination after being found operating a competing waxing business at the same location; EWC Franchise, LLC settled by paying $400,000 and agreeing not to enforce the non-compete against that franchisee, while separately suing the competing business's owner for tortious interference.
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 European Wax Center'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
$45,000
Total to open
$327,600–$836,950
Ongoing royalty
6% 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.
Defaulted to a rough beauty industry average, not a figure from European Wax Center's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.
Total cost of ownership over 5 years
$477,600 – $986,950
Startup investment
$327,600–$836,950
Royalty per year (6%)
$30,000
Total royalty, 5yr
$150,000
When would you break even?
Revenue alone doesn't tell you this -- it depends on what's left after rent, labor, and everything else. European Wax Center's FDD doesn't disclose a reliable profit figure (most franchisors don't), so this starts from a typical beauty profit margin (~10%) and applies it to the revenue you entered above -- adjust the percentage to your own realistic estimate.
Defaulted to a general beauty industry benchmark, not a figure from European Wax Center'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
6.6–16.7 years
Weigh that payback period against what you already know: European Wax Center 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 European Wax Center 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 European Wax Center's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.
| Year | Franchised units, start | Franchised units, end | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 848 | 938 | +90 |
| 2023 | 938 | 1,038 | +100 |
| 2024 | 1,038 | 1,062 | +24 |
Most recent year (2024): gained 24 franchised units, ending the year at 1,062 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: site-assessment criteria, a required Start-up Package of opening inventory ($18,000-$21,000), a Start-up Marketing Package, and licensing of the Zenoti-based "Violet" POS platform (with its own IT Platform Set-up Fee).
Territory protection (Item 12)
Item 12: franchisees who sign a Multi-Unit Development Agreement get a protected Development Territory in which EWC won't establish new locations, though it isn't a true exclusive territory -- EWC may still acquire competing chains and convert their locations to European Wax Center inside that same territory.
Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)
Item 17: 10-year initial term, with one additional successive 10-year term available for a $5,000 successor fee if the franchisee is in compliance and has kept the Center up to current design standards.
How European Wax Center compares to other Beauty franchises
Across the 6 beauty franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $336,685–$611,053, with royalties averaging around 6% of gross sales (based on the 6 of them that charge a flat %-of-revenue royalty).
Keep going
- European Wax Center and Sport Clips are both beauty franchises; Sport Clips's total investment starts about $90,800 lower than European Wax Center's. Sport Clips Franchise
- European Wax Center and Supercuts are both beauty franchises; Supercuts's total investment starts about $141,670 lower than European Wax Center's. Supercuts Franchise
Where this came from: MN CARDS file 10838, Clean FDD issued April 22, 2025, filed 9/15/2025, effective 9/17/2025. Item 5: the standard Franchise Fee is $45,000 for a new franchisee ($36,000 for an existing franchisee) -- the automated parser mistakenly picked up $72,000, the low end of the separate multi-unit Development Fee for a 3-or-more-center Development Agreement, instead of the single-unit fee. Item 6: royalty is 6% of Gross Sales, plus a 3% Marketing Fund Contribution paid directly to an affiliate. Item 7 lists two TOTAL rows -- a single-unit Franchise Agreement total ($327,600-$836,950, used here) and a materially higher multi-unit Development Agreement total ($363,600-$998,950) that embeds the larger Development Fee; the single-unit figure is used per this site's convention. Item 20 Table No. 1 confirmed (2022-2024, the most recent window in this filing). You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2025-09-17. 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.