Food & Beverage

Papa John's Franchise

Name: Papa John's Franchise
Brand: Papa John's

A pizza delivery and carry-out chain built on a "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza." positioning, with a growing share of orders placed through digital and third-party aggregator channels. John Schnatter opened the first Papa John's in 1984; Papa John's International franchised the brand from 1991 until transferring its U.S. franchise agreements to the current franchisor entity in February 2021 following a 2022 acquisition of a majority stake by an outside investor. Franchised unit count grew every year of the FDD's three-year window even as company-owned units were sold down sharply in 2025.

Opening more locationsFounded 1984HQ: Louisville, KY

Disclosed in the FDD's litigation section (Item 3)

Item 3 discloses a 2018-filed federal antitrust class action (In re Papa John's Employee and Franchisee Employee Antitrust Litigation) alleging an unlawful no-poaching agreement among franchisees; the company reached a $5,000,000 settlement in principle in 2022, with the court granting preliminary approval in August 2025 and Papa John's continuing to deny liability.

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 Papa John'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

$5,000

Total to open

$281,485–$890,267

Ongoing royalty

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 Papa John's's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.

Years of ownership

Total cost of ownership over 5 years

$531,485 – $1,140,267

Startup investment

$281,485–$890,267

Royalty per year (5%)

$50,000

Total royalty, 5yr

$250,000

When would you break even?

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

3.5–11.1 years

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

+31

+63

+80

202320242025

Year	Franchised units, start	Franchised units, end	Net change
2023	2,658	2,689	+31
2024	2,689	2,752	+63
2025	2,752	2,832	+80

Most recent year (2025): gained 80 franchised units, ending the year at 2,832 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: Development Area site approval, required training programs, and specifications/approved suppliers for equipment, signage, and food products; ongoing support includes administration of the Marketing Fund and Digital Fee-funded ordering platforms.

Territory protection (Item 12)

Item 12: a standard restaurant receives a real Territory -- generally a 1.5-mile radius (reduced to a half-mile in dense urban areas like New York City) -- within which Papa John's won't locate or license another standard restaurant during the Franchise Agreement's term, though it reserves the right to operate Non-Traditional restaurants inside that same Territory.

Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)

Item 17: 10-year term for a standard restaurant (5 years for Non-Traditional and Small-Town restaurants), with a matching renewal term available if the franchisee meets then-current requirements, including remodeling and signing a new agreement that may carry materially different terms.

How Papa John's 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

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

Keep going

Papa John's and Marco's Pizza are both food & beverage franchises; Papa John's's total investment starts about $4,992 lower than Marco's Pizza's. Marco's Pizza Franchise
Papa John's and Subway are both food & beverage franchises; Subway's total investment starts about $18,485 lower than Papa John's's. Subway Franchise

Where this came from: Papa John'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. 9570, Clean FDD issued December 28, 2025, filed 8/19/2026, effective 8/27/2026. Item 5: the Initial Franchise Fee for a standard restaurant is not a single number -- it ranges $5,000-$25,000 depending on incentives and negotiation ($5,000 flat for a Non-Traditional or Small-Town restaurant); this entry uses the $5,000 low end per this site's convention for fee ranges. Before opening, franchisees separately owe Papa John's $38,376-$80,426 for required Information System, GIS mapping, on-site support/installation, and opening inventory purchases -- a materially larger required payment to the franchisor than the franchise fee line alone suggests. Item 6: royalty is 5% of Net Sales for a standard restaurant (6% for a Small-Town restaurant), plus a 1.75% Digital Fee on online/aggregator orders and a 6% Marketing Fund contribution (25% of the standard rate for Non-Traditional/Small-Town restaurants). Item 7 Total (standard restaurant, pre-opening plus first 3 months): $281,485-$890,267. Item 20 Table No. 1 confirmed; company-owned outlets fell from 539 to 462 in 2025. You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2026-08-27. 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.