Food & Beverage

Marco's Pizza Franchise

Name: Marco's Pizza Franchise
Brand: Marco's Pizza

A pizza delivery and carry-out chain built on an Italian-recipe positioning with dough made fresh daily in-store. Pasquale "Pat" Giammarco founded Marco's Pizza in Toledo, Ohio in 1978; the current franchisor entity, Marco's Franchising, LLC, has offered Store franchises since January 2004 and is now majority-owned by Marco's Pizza Holdings, LLC. Franchised unit count grew every year of the FDD's three-year window, adding a net 121 franchised Stores across 2023-2025.

Opening more locationsFounded 1978HQ: Toledo, OH

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 Marco's Pizza'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

$25,000

Total to open

$286,477–$811,186

Ongoing royalty

5.5% 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 Marco's Pizza's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.

Years of ownership

Total cost of ownership over 5 years

$561,477 – $1,086,186

Startup investment

$286,477–$811,186

Royalty per year (5.5%)

$55,000

Total royalty, 5yr

$275,000

When would you break even?

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

3.6–10.1 years

Weigh that payback period against what you already know: Marco's Pizza 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 Marco's Pizza 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 Marco's Pizza's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.

+53

+43

+25

202320242025

Year	Franchised units, start	Franchised units, end	Net change
2023	1,018	1,071	+53
2024	1,071	1,114	+43
2025	1,114	1,139	+25

Most recent year (2025): gained 25 franchised units, ending the year at 1,139 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: initial training, site-selection guidance, and administration of the National Advertising Fund (through affiliate Marco's National Advertising Fund, Inc., a Florida non-profit) and Regional Advertising Funds.

Territory protection (Item 12)

Item 12: a real Area of Responsibility -- generally a 1-mile radius from the Store's front door -- within which Marco's won't operate or license another Store, except at "Special Venues" (stadiums, casinos, and similar non-traditional locations) that may still be inside that radius.

Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)

Item 17: 10-year term, with two additional 10-year renewal terms available for a $6,250 renewal fee (or 25% of the then-current standard franchise fee) if the franchisee is in good standing.

How Marco's Pizza compares to other Food & Beverage franchises

Across the 35 food & beverage franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $843,866–$2,063,296, with royalties averaging around 5.6% of gross sales (based on the 32 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

Keep going

Marco's Pizza and Papa John's are both food & beverage franchises; Papa John's's total investment starts about $4,992 lower than Marco's Pizza's. Papa John's Franchise
Marco's Pizza and Tropical Smoothie Cafe are both food & beverage franchises; Marco's Pizza's total investment starts about $13,523 lower than Tropical Smoothie Cafe's. Tropical Smoothie Cafe Franchise

Where this came from: Marco's only files a Net Worth/Experience Exemption notice with California DFPI, so this entry is sourced from Minnesota's CARDS registry instead: MN File No. 6621, Clean FDD issued April 18, 2026, filed 4/23/2026, effective 5/15/2026. Item 5: $25,000 standard initial franchise fee (discounted for veterans, first responders, and long-tenured Key Management Employees, as low as $0 under an Equipment Incentive Program). Item 6: royalty is 5.5% of Net Royalty Sales, adjustable up to a maximum of 6.0%. Item 6 also lists a National Advertising Fund contribution of 4% of Net Royalty Sales, plus a separate Regional Advertising Fund contribution (0.5%-1.2% depending on market) -- the automated parser's "1.0%" ad-fund figure appears to have picked up one of these regional line items rather than the 4% national rate; combined National plus Regional advertising contributions are capped at 5.5% of Net Royalty Sales. Item 7 Total: $286,477-$811,186. Item 20 Table No. 1 confirmed. 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.