What it costs to open

Item 7 is the franchisor’s guess at what it costs to open. The low end usually assumes a finished room, a landlord cheque, or a smaller box. The high end usually assumes a shell. There is no official middle figure.

The federal form asks for each expenditure, the amount, when it is paid, and who gets it. The FTC’s Franchise Rule compliance guide also draws a line the brochure likes to ignore: Item 7 is an opening estimate, not a forecast of rent, royalty and advertising for the life of the deal.

Two filings can put the same cost under different labels, or bury it inside a wider row that cannot be split without inventing a number. Line items stay when the filing has them, and stay absent when it does not.

Every brand below discloses an Item 7 total. Six also have worksheets. Döner Haus’s 2026 table is eighteen rows totalling $359,500–$586,000 for an 850–1,200 square-foot imbiss. The open shops are in New York and Los Angeles — East Village, Astoria, Hell’s Kitchen, Bayside, Sunnyside and Central LA — so that range is those markets, not a national average. German Doner Kebab, Shah’s Halal Food, The Great Greek, Mad for Chicken and 375° Chicken ‘n Fries are the other five worksheets. Doner Shack publishes $498,000–$1,007,000 with no US shop behind it and no worksheet here. Wienerschnitzel has fees in the companion directory and no Item 7 in this one.

How to use the directory

Start with format, not the cheapest printed high. A 1,200-square-foot counter shop and a 4,000-square-foot full restaurant are different projects even when their totals overlap. Figures from different years also carry different labor, material, and rent assumptions. Every row below keeps the disclosure year beside the figure for that reason.

Compact one-shop counter. Döner Haus’s 2026 table is a single unit of 850–1,200 square feet at $359,500–$586,000. There is no five-shop minimum. The six open shops are in New York and Los Angeles. 375°’s 2024 table is an 800–1,500 square-foot outlet at $324,100–$521,500, with an Item 19 on two corporate shops.

Full restaurant, one unit. Shah’s 2024 table is a 1,200–2,000 square-foot full-sized restaurant at $197,000–$405,000. That is the lowest printed high in the set, and it is not the compact counter. Forty-four of 58 outlets were licensed; Item 20 said no franchises were operating. Maryland later treated those license agreements as unregistered franchise sales. Construction prints $80,000–$160,000 on a licensed national restaurant, not the same footprint or the same cities as the 850–1,200 square-foot New York and Los Angeles tables. The high column of the line items sums to $410,000 against a printed $405,000. There is no Item 19. Great Greek’s 2023 table is an 1,800–2,000 square-foot in-line or end-cap at $582,014–$1,088,560; the low column uses a discounted fee for affiliated-brand owners, and the three years on file lost money to litigation. Mad for Chicken’s 2025 table is a 2,000–4,000 square-foot Full Restaurant at $321,125–$691,700, mostly company stores, with a separate Express Model at $243,500–$470,700 and a Multi-Unit Development Agreement at $263,500–$711,700 that is a commitment rather than a store.

Five-outlet minimum. GDK’s 2024 table is a 1,200–1,400 square-foot outlet inside a five-outlet minimum, at $690,500–$1,123,000, from a US company with six loss years on file and US shops that have since closed.

No US shop behind the estimate. Doner Shack’s 2025 table is $498,000–$1,007,000 on zero US outlets, and as of 2026 it is not selling US franchises.

Those descriptions sit next to the totals. The table below is grouped the same way. It is not a cheapness ranking.

Next, open a line-item page where one is available. Read the original labels, then the footnotes in the issued FDD. This index keeps the filing’s numbers; it does not turn “restaurant package” into a guessed equipment/construction split. If a filing supplies only a total, the total remains listed and the breakdown remains absent.

Then replace the filing’s general assumptions with evidence for the actual site: a contractor’s site-specific scope; the lease, landlord work, and tenant-improvement allowance; required equipment and utility connections; a monthly cash model for the stated initial period and beyond; and recent franchisees’ actual opening costs.

The FTC’s review guide specifically points readers to recent franchisees for opening-time and total-investment evidence. Public state records provide another check on what an Item 7 actually says: Minnesota’s filed Shah’s Halal disclosure separates construction from a fixture package, while a filed Great Greek disclosure uses a combined equipment, furniture, supplies, and fixtures line. Those are not interchangeable labels.

Build and format

Construction is usually the widest row, and it is the row whose label changes the most. GDK splits leasehold improvements, mechanical/electrical/plumbing, fit-out, and architect fees; Shah’s prints one build-out line; Great Greek pairs a design fee with leasehold improvements that run $250,000–$650,000. Start with construction, then equipment, signage, and technology. Great Greek’s restaurant package and Shah’s fixture package are not equipment synonyms; restaurant package keeps those bundles whole.

Site condition explains more of the construction spread than contractor uncertainty around one defined scope. Second generation versus shell is the delivered-condition test. Tenant-improvement allowance is the cash-timing test for landlord money. Cost per square foot shows what you get when you divide an Item 7 range by a square-footage range, and why the result is still not a bid.

Soft costs and occupancy

The opening check that looks like rent is usually a deposit. Rent and deposits and prepaid amounts share the real-estate labels and then split the questions: what cash leaves before opening, versus what occupancy costs each month after that. Franchise fee is the Item 5 amount that also appears as an Item 7 row; Great Greek’s low column uses a discounted fee for affiliated-brand owners, and bluTaco discloses no initial fee. Opening inventory, professional fees, grand opening, licenses and permits, insurance, and training costs are the other named soft-cost rows. Soft costs groups professional, training, insurance, licenses, and miscellaneous opening costs so they can be seen together without forcing them into one invented line. Working capital is the additional-funds estimate for the stated initial period — three months in four of the itemised filings, up to six in Great Greek — and is not a break-even promise.

How to read the table

How to read Item 7 is the sequence: offering and date, every column, footnotes, arithmetic, then Items 5, 6, 8, and 11, then a site budget. What the range hides is the companion: format, bundled labels, discounts, zeros, filing year, and the Shah’s high-column sum of $410,000 against a printed $405,000. The printable worksheet is a blank table in that reading order, with no calculator.

Three chapters handle tables that are not a single restaurant’s cost. Reading a multi-unit Item 7 covers the development-agreement tables in Mad for Chicken’s and Doner Shack’s 2025 filings, both of which price the commitment plus one outlet rather than the outlets they oblige. What a revision tells you works the only valid year-over-year comparison here, where a single training row accounts for the whole movement. And the franchisor behind the estimate reads the Item 21 audited statements bound into the same documents, on the same terms for every brand here, Döner Haus included.

What the totals table is

Each row below is an issued range, a format statement, and a disclosure year, grouped by what you can actually buy. A compact one-shop counter and a licensed full restaurant are not two prices for the same opening. Shah’s $405,000 high and GDK’s $1,123,000 high are both 2024 restaurant tables; one is a 1,200–2,000 square-foot full-sized restaurant with a fixture package and no operating franchises in the filing, the other is a 1,200–1,400 square-foot outlet inside a five-outlet minimum with split MEP and fit-out. Döner Haus’s $359,500–$586,000 is a 2026 imbiss range for shops in New York and Los Angeles. Great Greek’s $582,014–$1,088,560 is a 2023 in-line or end-cap. Mad for Chicken’s Express Model of $243,500–$470,700 is a second offering in the same 12 March 2025 filing as the $321,125–$691,700 Full Restaurant, and the third table in that document — a Multi-Unit Development Agreement at $263,500–$711,700 — prices entry into a three-outlet commitment plus the first outlet, so it is not a restaurant total and does not belong in the compact group. Reading a multi-unit Item 7 is why.

Click through to a cost page when the filing itemises. The generated table keeps original labels, prints the filing’s total, and notes when the high column does not add to that total. Shah’s is the live example: fifteen lines sum to $410,000 against a printed $405,000. The cost page also states the working-capital period, which is three months for GDK, Shah’s, Mad for Chicken, 375° and Döner Haus, and zero to six months for Great Greek.

Brands that have a total and no worksheet stay on this page only. Do not infer their construction or equipment from a neighbor. Do not infer Doner Shack line items from its total. Do not infer Wienerschnitzel investment from its fee and unit counts.

A reading path

If the task is to understand one brand, open that brand’s cost page first, then how to read Item 7, then the chapter for the widest row in that table — construction for GDK and Great Greek, additional funds for Mad for Chicken, the fixture-plus-build-out pair for Shah’s. If the task is to compare two brands, read what the range hides before subtracting one total from the other. If the task is a live site, print the worksheet and fill it from the FDD that was actually delivered, using the totals below as a second check on labels.

The FTC’s fourteen-day rule, described in its FDD walkthrough, is the clock for that live document. A comparative table compiled from earlier filings cannot replace it. Filing years below are there so a 2023 Great Greek total is not set against a 2026 Döner Haus range as if they were the same year’s bids.

Companion reading for ongoing fees rather than buildout is the fee directory at qsrlandscape.com. Item 6 stacks and Item 7 ranges answer different questions; this site is the second of those.

Use the chapters to decide which questions to carry into a current FDD, a lease, and a contractor’s scope. Use the table below for the issued totals and filing years. Use a line-item cost page when the filing supplies one.