Food & Beverage

Scooter's Coffee Franchise

A quick-service coffee chain best known for its small-footprint drive-thru Kiosk Stores serving espresso drinks, smoothies and baked goods, alongside newer End Cap and other store formats. Don and Linda Eckles opened the first Scooter's Coffee store in 1998, and the brand began franchising in 2002; the current franchisor entity, Scooter's Coffee, LLC, a Nebraska LLC, has offered franchises since October 2010. Franchised unit count grew every year of the FDD's three-year window, led by a +204 jump in 2023 as the brand scaled rapidly.

Opening more locationsFounded 1998HQ: Omaha, NE

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 Scooter's Coffee'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

$40,000

Total to open

$1,163,650–$1,345,750

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.

Your estimated annual revenue

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

Years of ownership

Total cost of ownership over 5 years

$1,463,650 – $1,645,750

Startup investment

$1,163,650–$1,345,750

Royalty per year (6%)

$60,000

Total royalty, 5yr

$300,000

When would you break even?

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

14.5–16.8 years

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

+204

+96

+57

202320242025

Year	Franchised units, start	Franchised units, end	Net change
2023	525	729	+204
2024	729	825	+96
2025	825	882	+57

Most recent year (2025): gained 57 franchised units, ending the year at 882 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: a required ~31-hour, four-week Initial Training Program (week one at a corporate training kiosk, weeks two through four at a designated training store), and required purchases of coffee, syrups, smoothie mixes and equipment from affiliate Scooter's Coffee Supply Chain.

Territory protection (Item 12)

Item 12: no exclusive territory -- Scooter's grants only a non-exclusive Search Area to help locate a site, and explicitly states franchisees may face competition from other franchisees, company-owned stores, or other channels of distribution.

Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)

Item 17: 10-year initial term, with one additional 10-year renewal option available if the franchisee meets then-current requirements (otherwise the franchisee may continue month-to-month by mutual agreement).

How Scooter's Coffee 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

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

Culver's

$3,406,350–$10,294,100 · 4% 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

Scooter's Coffee and Slim Chickens are both food & beverage franchises; Scooter's Coffee's total investment starts about $25,250 lower than Slim Chickens's. Slim Chickens Franchise
Scooter's Coffee and Church's Texas Chicken are both food & beverage franchises; Scooter's Coffee's total investment starts about $38,750 lower than Church's Texas Chicken's. Church's Texas Chicken Franchise

Where this came from: Scooter's Coffee has no California DFPI entity at all (not even an exemption filing), so this entry is sourced entirely from Minnesota's CARDS registry: MN File No. 6805, Clean FDD issued April 3, 2026, filed 4/3/2026, effective 4/23/2026. Item 5: $40,000 initial franchise fee, plus a separate $20,000 Initial Opening Support Fee. Item 6: royalty is 6% of Net Sales; National Marketing and Advertising Contribution is currently 2% of Net Sales (may rise to 4%). Item 7 Total, Kiosk Store format (the brand's primary drive-thru format): $1,163,650-$1,345,750; separate End Cap and Other Store format totals in the same filing are not used here. Item 20 Table No. 1 hand-corrected: the automated parser's compact table formatting caused it to miss the 2023 row entirely (525->729, +204) because the year label sits in a separate column from the outlet-type label; the full three-year table is 2023: 525->729 (+204), 2024: 729->825 (+96), 2025: 825->882 (+57). You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2026-04-23. 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.