Section 28 Rev. 2026-08-16
Comparing two Item 7 tables
Put two brands side by side and the first job is to check they describe the same kind of restaurant. 375° and Mad for Chicken are the closest pair here, and they still do not.
The closest pair here is two filings issued three days apart. 375° Chicken ‘n Fries’s disclosure document was issued on 30 April 2024 and Mad for Chicken’s on 3 May 2024, and every Mad for Chicken figure on this page is from that 3 May 2024 document, because a contemporaneous pair is the whole point. The brand’s current disclosure, issued 12 March 2025, is read against its predecessor in diffing the same offering. They use the same row names in nearly every bucket — Architectural Plans, Leasehold Improvements, Construction and/or Remodeling, Furniture, Fixtures and Equipment, Business Licenses and Permits, Your Training Expenses, Operating Expenses / Additional Funds - 3 months — and both are single-restaurant tables from chicken concepts headquartered in New York State.
If any two tables here can be compared, it is these. Working the comparison properly still starts with a disqualification, and it does not produce a winner.
First: are they the same kind of thing?
They are not. Mad for Chicken’s 3 May 2024 Item 7 is a full restaurant of 2,000–4,000 square feet. 375°’s 2024 Item 7 is a single outlet of 800–1,500 square feet. The smaller format’s ceiling is below the larger format’s floor, so no site satisfies both descriptions.
The same filing adds a second warning. Mad for Chicken’s 3 May 2024 document discloses an express format at $242,500–$466,700 alongside the full restaurant at $320,125–$687,700. The express table is the one closer in spirit to 375°’s outlet, and it has no line-item worksheet here. Comparing 375°’s rows against Mad for Chicken’s full-restaurant rows is the comparison available, not the comparison a buyer would most want.
Step one therefore ends with a written caveat, not with a green light. The format drives the total chapter is the longer version of why that caveat is not a formality, and diffing the same offering applies the same disqualification to one brand’s successive filings instead of two brands in the same year.
Line up buckets, and say when a bucket is a sum
Labels get compared row to row; costs get compared bucket to bucket. Both filings’ construction figures below are the sum of two rows inside that same filing, and 375°’s technology figure is the sum of POS System and Computer Systems. Nothing has been split, renamed, or moved between brands.
| Bucket | Mad for Chicken, 2,000–4,000 sq ft, FDD issued 3 May 2024 | 375° Chicken ‘n Fries, 800–1,500 sq ft, FDD issued 30 April 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Franchise fee | $35,000 | $40,000 |
| Training | $3,000–$6,000 | $100–$5,000 |
| Deposits and rent | $15,500–$37,500 | $10,000–$30,000 |
| Construction | $85,000–$255,000 | $108,000–$212,000 |
| Equipment and furniture | $85,000–$110,000 | $100,000–$120,000 |
| Signage | $5,500–$9,500 | $10,000–$12,000 |
| POS and technology | $3,000–$15,000 | $4,500–$7,500 |
| Opening inventory | $14,250–$28,200 | $5,000–$10,000 |
| Professional fees | $2,500–$7,000 | $2,000–$5,000 |
| Licenses and permits | $2,500–$5,000 | $2,000–$5,000 |
| Grand opening | $15,000 | $10,000 |
| Insurance | $2,500 | $2,500–$5,000 |
| Working capital, 3 months | $51,375–$162,000 | $30,000–$60,000 |
| Printed total | $320,125–$687,700 | $324,100–$521,500 |
Both tables use thirteen buckets and neither has a restaurant-package row or a miscellaneous row, which is what makes the alignment unusually clean. Mad for Chicken reaches thirteen buckets in fourteen rows and 375° in fifteen.
Read the crossing, not the totals
The two printed ranges cross. 375°’s low of $324,100 is $3,975 above Mad for Chicken’s low of $320,125, while its high of $521,500 is $166,200 below. One table starts higher and finishes much lower. Neither brand is “cheaper” in a sentence that survives the next question.
Where the crossing comes from is visible bucket by bucket. The smaller outlet’s estimate is higher at both ends in three buckets: the franchise fee, at $40,000 against $35,000; equipment and furniture, at $100,000–$120,000 against $85,000–$110,000; and signage, at $10,000–$12,000 against $5,500–$9,500. The larger restaurant’s estimate is higher at both ends in six: training, deposits and rent, opening inventory, professional fees, grand opening, and working capital. Two buckets cross internally — construction, where 375° starts higher and ends lower, and technology, where Mad for Chicken’s single POS row runs $3,000–$15,000 against a two-row combination of $4,500–$7,500.
One bucket carries most of the difference at the top. The additional-funds rows are $102,000 apart at their highs, which is more than half of the $166,200 gap between the two printed high totals — and both rows carry the identical label Operating Expenses / Additional Funds - 3 months. Same words, same stated period, highs $102,000 apart. The additional-funds line chapter is where that row gets taken apart; here it is enough to notice that the largest single driver of the comparison is the row whose contents neither table describes.
Check each filing’s arithmetic before crossing between them
Both columns of both tables add to their printed totals here, so this step passes quietly. It does not always. Shah’s Halal Food’s 2024 high column sums to $410,000 against a printed $405,000, and the generated cost page reports both. A comparison that starts from a column that does not add carries that gap into every subsequent line. The low column and high column chapter treats the two columns as separate checks for exactly this reason.
When the buckets refuse to line up
The 375° and Mad for Chicken pair is the exception. Take German Doner Kebab’s 2024 table and Great Greek’s 2023 table instead and the alignment breaks at step two. German Doner Kebab discloses thirteen buckets across twenty rows, including equipment of $166,500–$210,000, technology of $27,500–$30,000, and signage of $20,000–$35,000. Great Greek discloses ten buckets across twelve rows, with a single Restaurant Package of $225,964–$248,560 and no equipment, technology, or signage row at all.
A bucket-by-bucket sheet would show Great Greek at nothing for equipment and nothing for signage, which is false. The filing bundled those costs into a package it did not itemise, and the restaurant package chapter keeps the bundle whole rather than inventing a split to make a chart symmetrical. When that happens, the honest comparison is at the level of the printed totals with the format and year attached, plus a written note that the composition is not comparable. Two tables that cannot be aligned should be reported as two tables, not averaged into one.
The facts that sit outside Item 7
Two opening estimates are not two businesses. Mad for Chicken’s 3 May 2024 filing discloses a 5 percent royalty, a 1 percent brand fund plus a 1 percent media marketing fee, and 1 percent required local advertising. 375°’s 2024 filing discloses 6 percent, 1 percent, and 1 percent. The brand with the lower high total carries the higher royalty, and no Item 7 comparison can see that. The what Item 7 excludes chapter collects the rest.
Item 11 tracks the same direction as the Item 7 training rows in this pair: the 3 May 2024 Mad for Chicken filing discloses 25 classroom hours and 106 on the job, and 375°’s 30 April 2024 filing 23 and 67. Neither of those is Mad for Chicken’s current obligation — its 12 March 2025 filing keeps the 25 classroom hours and raises on-the-job training to 196, which is the largest movement between that pair of documents and is treated in what a revision tells you. Both systems were small at their 2023 reporting dates — Mad for Chicken with 19 outlets, 14 of them company-operated, and 375° with five, three of them company-operated. The FTC’s FDD walkthrough recommends checking a filing against recent franchisees’ actual opening costs, and in a system with a handful of franchised units that check is short.
The comparison sheet
- Write both format statements and both issuance dates at the top.
- Confirm neither filing discloses a second format you should be using instead.
- Copy every row under its own label; only then group into buckets, marking each bucket that is a sum of rows within one filing.
- Add each filing’s low and high columns and compare them with its own printed total.
- Note every bucket one filing has and the other does not, and write why — bundled, absent, or elsewhere.
- Compare bucket to bucket in both directions and count the crossings.
- Identify the single bucket carrying most of the difference at the high end, and ask what it contains.
- Add Item 6 rates, Item 8 required purchases, and Item 11 hours before drawing any conclusion.
One column of that sheet is unavailable from a single document. Whether either filing’s figures are a revision of the year before, and by how much, is a separate comparison with its own preconditions; what changes between two filings is where Mad for Chicken’s 2024 and 2025 tables are put side by side, and a first Item 7 covers the case where there is no earlier filing to compare with at all.
Done this way, the comparison produces a list: why the smaller format prices equipment higher, why the larger format’s opening-inventory estimate is nearly three times the smaller one’s, and what an identically worded three-month reserve is meant to cover in two different documents. Done the other way, it produces a ranking, and the ranking is wrong before the second column is filled in.