Format drives the total

Sort these brands by the small end of the disclosed footprint and the totals refuse to follow. The order that comes out is not close to the order of the money, it is not even roughly monotonic, and the two filings whose footprints begin at exactly the same number sit at opposite ends of the whole table. That is the most useful thing square footage can tell you about an Item 7 total: not much, and never on its own.

Format does the work instead. Format is what kind of restaurant the table describes — seated or standing, in-line or end-cap, full or express, one outlet or a development commitment — and it moves the total in ways area cannot predict, because it decides which rows exist at all.

Footprint order is not total order

Every brand here that discloses both a footprint and an Item 7 range, ordered by the low end of the footprint:

Brand	Disclosed footprint	Item 7	Filing year
375° Chicken ‘n Fries	800–1,500 sq ft	$324,100–$521,500	2024
Döner Haus	850–1,200 sq ft	$359,500–$586,000	2026
German Doner Kebab	1,200–1,400 sq ft	$690,500–$1,123,000	2024
Doner Shack	1,200–1,800 sq ft	$498,000–$1,007,000	2025
Shah’s Halal Food	1,200–2,000 sq ft	$197,000–$405,000	2024
The Great Greek	1,800–2,000 sq ft	$582,014–$1,088,560	2023
Mad for Chicken	2,000–4,000 sq ft	$321,125–$691,700	2025

The rows in the middle do most of the damage to the intuition. German Doner Kebab’s 2024 table, Doner Shack’s 2025 table and Shah’s 2024 table all start at 1,200 square feet. One has the highest high estimate in the group at $1,123,000; another has the lowest at $405,000. Same footprint floor, and a gap of $718,000 between those two high columns.

The ends of the table are no better behaved. The largest footprint here, Mad for Chicken’s 2,000–4,000 square-foot full restaurant, carries a high total below both German Doner Kebab’s 1,200–1,400 square-foot outlet and Great Greek’s 1,800–2,000 square-foot in-line or end-cap. At the other end, the two formats with the smallest ceilings — Döner Haus at 1,200 square feet and 375° at 1,500 — both carry a high total above Shah’s 1,200–2,000 square-foot restaurant. If area drove cost, none of that would be possible.

Dividing the total by the area does not repair the ordering; it only expresses it as a unit cost, which the cost per square foot chapter works through in four combinations per brand. The arithmetic there is a way of seeing the mismatch. It is not a way of removing it.

The one format comparison held inside a single filing

Across brands, format and footprint and filing year all move at once, so nothing is isolated. There is exactly one place here where a format change is observable with everything else held still. Mad for Chicken’s FDD issued 12 March 2025 discloses a Full Restaurant at $321,125–$691,700 on 2,000–4,000 square feet and an Express Model at $243,500–$470,700 on 750–2,000 square feet. One franchisor, one document, one year, one system’s specifications, and two formats. Moving from the 2,000–4,000 square-foot restaurant to the 750–2,000 square-foot one takes $77,625 off the low estimate and $221,000 off the high.

That is the cleanest evidence available here that format, not square footage, is what the total responds to. It comes with two limits worth stating. The line-item worksheet here is the full restaurant, so dividing the Express Model total by the full-restaurant footprint would mix two offerings, and taking the Express Model’s low against the full restaurant’s high would manufacture a spread the filing never printed.

The same document’s third Item 7 table, a Multi-Unit Development Agreement at $263,500–$711,700, is not a third format and does not belong in this comparison. It prices entry into a three-outlet development agreement plus the first outlet, and its own footnote says the low end assumes that first outlet is an Express Model while the high end assumes it is a Full Restaurant — so it is built out of the two formats above rather than describing a third one. Reading a multi-unit Item 7 takes it in full.

The format statement says more than an area

The line printed above Item 7 usually contains a fact that changes the reading of every row beneath it, and square footage is rarely the most important part of it.

German Doner Kebab’s 2024 range is per outlet inside a five-outlet minimum commitment. A reader treating $690,500–$1,123,000 as the price of opening one restaurant has misread the offering, not the arithmetic. Great Greek’s 2023 table specifies an in-line or end-cap restaurant, which is a statement about frontage, party walls, and what a landlord delivers as much as about area. Shah’s 2024 table says full-sized restaurant, and the same filing excludes non-traditional sites from the territory. Döner Haus’s 2026 table describes a single unit in a typical retail space, and the brand is a standing-service imbiss rather than a seated restaurant, which is why its footprint band is among the smallest here — the format explains the area, not the reverse.

Those descriptions decide which rows a table needs. A standing-service counter does not need the seating a full restaurant needs. An in-line unit inherits a different delivered condition from an end-cap with two exposed elevations. An outlet inside a five-store commitment is priced with a development schedule behind it.

Which rows actually move, and which move the other way

Take four buckets across the itemised filings and check them against footprint. None behaves as area alone would predict.

Construction inverts most sharply. German Doner Kebab’s construction-bucket rows run $355,000–$680,000 on 1,200–1,400 square feet, while Mad for Chicken’s run $85,000–$255,000 on 2,000–4,000 square feet, and Döner Haus’s single combined row runs $131,000–$266,000 on 850–1,200. German Doner Kebab’s construction low is more than four times Mad for Chicken’s, on a floor a third the size, because mechanical, electrical, and plumbing at $150,000–$175,000 and fit-out at $175,000–$205,000 are specification decisions rather than area calculations.

Equipment inverts too. 375°’s 800–1,500 square-foot outlet discloses furniture, fixtures and equipment at $100,000–$120,000; Mad for Chicken’s 2,000–4,000 square-foot restaurant discloses the same label at $85,000–$110,000. The smaller format’s equipment estimate is higher at both ends. The equipment chapter reads that as menu and production line, not floor plan.

Signage follows frontage and local rules, not interior area. German Doner Kebab’s 2024 signage row is $20,000–$35,000 on 1,200–1,400 square feet; Mad for Chicken’s is $5,500–$9,500 on 2,000–4,000. The signage chapter is where that boundary sits.

Opening inventory follows menu and turn. German Doner Kebab’s 1,200–1,400 square-foot outlet discloses $15,000–$20,000, and Great Greek’s larger 1,800–2,000 square-foot restaurant discloses $7,000–$15,000 — a lower estimate at both ends on a bigger floor. 375° discloses $5,000–$10,000 and Shah’s $10,000–$30,000. The opening inventory chapter treats those as product decisions.

Five totals with no footprint at all

Five brands here disclose an Item 7 range and no square footage: The Halal Guys at $461,400–$1,333,500, Dog Haus at $357,437–$625,800, Crave Hot Dogs and BBQ at $301,500–$1,192,500, Pepper Lunch at $609,200–$1,471,500, and Capriotti’s at $417,100–$748,500, all from a May 2024 comparative study of published FDDs. Pepper Lunch’s high is the largest figure on these pages and cannot be placed on the table above, because there is nothing to place it against.

That is a reminder about what the footprint field is for. It is not a normaliser. It is one clause of a format statement, and where it is missing the total simply stays a total — as it does for Wienerschnitzel and bluTaco, which have fees and unit counts here and no Item 7 at all.

Before comparing two totals

1. Copy the whole format line, not the square footage: seated or standing, in-line or end-cap, express or full, one outlet or a commitment.
2. Note the filing year beside each total. Great Greek’s is 2023, GDK’s, Shah’s and 375°’s are 2024, Mad for Chicken’s and Doner Shack’s are 2025, and Döner Haus’s is 2026.
3. Check whether the same filing discloses a second format, as Mad for Chicken’s does, and keep the tables apart. The Multi-Unit Development Agreement is a commitment, not a third box.
4. Ask which rows the format removes. An absent seating or signage row is a format consequence, not a saving.
5. Read comparing two Item 7 tables before putting two brands side by side, and what the range hides before treating either endpoint as a plan.

The footprint is a useful sanity check on whether two tables describe similar buildings. It is not a scaling factor, it does not order the totals, and in the one case here where a format changes inside a single filing, the total moves without a footprint being restated at all.