Cleaning
Merry Maids Franchise
Residential home cleaning franchise, one of the largest cleaning franchise networks in the U.S., operating under the ServiceMaster/Roark Capital family of brands.
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 Merry Maids'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
$55,000
Total to open
$126,880–$170,110
Ongoing royalty
7% 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 cleaning industry average, not a figure from Merry Maids's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.
Total cost of ownership over 5 years
$266,880 – $310,110
Startup investment
$126,880–$170,110
Royalty per year (7%)
$28,000
Total royalty, 5yr
$140,000
When would you break even?
Revenue alone doesn't tell you this -- it depends on what's left after rent, labor, and everything else. Merry Maids's FDD doesn't disclose a reliable profit figure (most franchisors don't), so this starts from a typical cleaning profit margin (~20%) and applies it to the revenue you entered above -- adjust the percentage to your own realistic estimate.
Defaulted to a general cleaning industry benchmark, not a figure from Merry Maids'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
1.6–2.1 years
Weigh that payback period against what you already know: Merry Maids is currently losing locations. A long payback period on a shrinking brand is a very different bet than the same payback period on a growing one.
Is Merry Maids 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
ShrinkingFrom Item 20 of Merry Maids's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.
| Year | Franchised units, start | Franchised units, end | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 989 | 946 | -43 |
| 2023 | 946 | 884 | -62 |
| 2024 | 884 | 802 | -82 |
Most recent year (2024): lost 82 franchised units, ending the year at 802 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)
Training is coordinated through a management agreement with an affiliate ("SM Manager") rather than Merry Maids directly, and the FDD doesn't disclose a fixed day-count (delivered virtually or in-person, led from a Memphis, TN location). The franchisor does commit to 12 weeks of telephone business coaching after opening and a 1-3 day annual conference.
Territory protection (Item 12)
Territory carries only "limited protected rights," not full exclusivity (based on 40,000+ households averaging $75,000+ income) -- and continued protection is contingent on hitting minimum weekly Gross Sales targets that ramp from $4,000/week in year 1 to $12,000/week by year 5; missing them in 3 of any 9 periods lets the franchisor shrink the territory or decline to renew. This performance-linked structure is a plausible real contributor to this entry's own accelerating unit decline (-43/-62/-82 across 2022-2024).
Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)
5-year initial term (shorter than most in this dataset), with two 5-year renewal options. No termination-without-cause provision. Disputes go through non-binding mediation, then binding arbitration in Atlanta, GA, the franchisor's home city.
How Merry Maids compares to other Cleaning franchises
Across the 3 cleaning franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $116,490–$156,983, with royalties averaging around 6.8% of gross sales (based on the 3 of them that charge a flat %-of-revenue royalty). That's still a small sample -- treat it as a rough starting point, not an industry-wide benchmark.
Where this came from: Sourced from Merry Maids SPE LLC's FDD (issuance date July 25, 2025), filed with the California DFPI as a Registration Application (App ID APP00003113), effective November 12, 2025. You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed July 25, 2025. 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.