Franchise fee

The initial franchise fee is the one Item 7 row that should match Item 5. It is paid to the franchisor for the right to open, not for construction, equipment, or inventory. A low column that is smaller than the stated first-time fee is usually a discount for a defined class of buyer, not a negotiation target printed for everyone.

The FTC’s Franchise Rule compliance guide requires fees paid to the franchisor to reconcile across the disclosure items. The buyer’s job is to notice when the Item 7 low is not the fee the reader will pay.

Itemised franchise-fee rows

Brand	Filing label	Low	High	First-time fee on the brand record
German Doner Kebab	Initial Franchise Fee	$30,000	$30,000	$30,000
Shah’s Halal Food	Initial Franchise Fee	$30,000	$30,000	$30,000
The Great Greek	Initial franchise fee	$35,550	$39,500	$39,500
Mad for Chicken	Initial Franchise Fee	$35,000	$35,000	$35,000
375° Chicken ‘n Fries	Initial Franchise Fee	$40,000	$40,000	$40,000

Great Greek is the worked example. The 2023 filing’s Item 7 low uses $35,550. The first-time fee is $39,500. The $3,950 difference is a discount available to owners of affiliated brands. A reader who is not in that class should carry $39,500 into the opening budget and should not treat $582,014 — the printed Item 7 low — as available either, because that total is built on the discounted fee. Adding $3,950 to $582,014 gives $585,964 as the low-end total a first-time buyer would reconstruct from the same rows. That reconstruction is arithmetic on disclosed numbers; it is not a new filing.

GDK, Shah’s, Mad for Chicken, and 375° print the same number in both columns. Those are fixed fees in Item 7, not ranges. They can still change in a later FDD, and they can still be reduced by a negotiated incentive that is not in the table. The disclosed figure is the starting point.

Döner Haus’s brand record lists a $35,000 initial fee and an Item 7 range of $359,500–$586,000 without a line-item schedule here. The fee is a fact about the offering; it is not a row that can be subtracted from the range to reverse-engineer the rest of the budget.

When the fee is disclosed as none

bluTaco’s 2024 comparative-study record lists the initial fee as none. There is no Item 7 worksheet for bluTaco in this dataset, so there is no franchise-fee row to put in the league table. “None” is a disclosure about Item 5, not a $0 construction project. The same record notes that no royalty rate is disclosed and that the agreement runs until either party terminates it. A buyer who treats a missing initial fee as a cheap opening has skipped Items 6 and 7.

Other first-time fees in the broader brand set, for context around the itemised rows above, are The Halal Guys at $60,000, Pepper Lunch at $50,000, Crave Hot Dogs and BBQ at $45,000, Dog Haus and Capriotti’s at $40,000, Wienerschnitzel at $32,000, and Doner Shack with no current U.S. offering. Those figures are from the brand records and their stated sources; they are not Item 7 line items in this directory.

What the fee does not buy

The franchise fee is not training travel, not opening inventory, and not the grand-opening campaign. GDK lists Initial Training at $5,000–$10,000 and Opening Inventory at $15,000–$20,000 as separate rows. Shah’s lists Travel Expenses to Attend Training at $2,000–$20,000. Great Greek lists Travel and Living Expenses (while attending training) at $10,000–$20,000. 375° lists Your Training Expenses at $100–$5,000. Folding those into “the fee” makes Item 7 look simpler and the cash plan worse.

Refundability is a footnote question. Some fees are earned on signing, some are refundable if a site is not approved, some are credited against a development schedule. GDK’s table is per outlet inside a five-outlet minimum; the $30,000 cell is the per-outlet fee in that structure, not a standalone single-store offering. Item 5 and the development agreement, not the Item 7 cell alone, state how many fees are due and when.

Transfer and renewal fees are later events. GDK discloses a transfer fee of 5 percent of the sale price and a renewal fee of 50 percent of the then-current franchise fee. Great Greek’s transfer fee is the greater of $29,500 or 10 percent of the sale price, capped at the then-current franchise fee, with a $2,500 renewal fee on a 35-year term. Those amounts do not belong in the opening Item 7 total. They belong in the exit and renewal model.

Worked example: fee share of the high total

Brand	Fee (high column)	Item 7 high	Fee as share of high
German Doner Kebab	$30,000	$1,123,000	3%
Shah’s Halal Food	$30,000	$405,000	7%
The Great Greek	$39,500	$1,088,560	4%
Mad for Chicken	$35,000	$687,700	5%
375° Chicken ‘n Fries	$40,000	$521,500	8%

Shah’s and 375° show the largest fee shares because their totals are smaller, not because the fee is unusually high. GDK’s $30,000 is the same dollar amount as Shah’s and a smaller share of a larger build. Ranking brands by fee share without looking at construction is how a $10,000 difference in Item 5 crowds out a $400,000 difference in leasehold improvements.

Franchise-fee checklist

1. Read Item 5 and the Item 7 fee row together. They should name the same amount for a first-time buyer.
2. If the Item 7 low is lower, as with Great Greek’s $35,550, write down who qualifies for the discount.
3. Separate training travel, inventory, and grand opening from the fee.
4. Check refundability, development-schedule multipliers, and when the fee is due.
5. Leave transfer and renewal fees off the opening worksheet.
6. For offerings with no Item 7 rows, keep the Item 5 fee as a fee — do not invent the rest of the table around it.

Multi-unit schedules and the fee that is due more than once

GDK’s Item 7 is per outlet inside a five-outlet minimum. Five times $30,000 is $150,000 of fees if each outlet pays the disclosed amount, before any development-schedule incentive the FDD may describe in Item 5. This directory does not print a five-store total, because the table is an outlet table. A buyer signing that development schedule still has to multiply the fee, and then decide whether construction, equipment, and additional funds multiply the same way — they will not, site by site.

Resale of an existing outlet substitutes a transfer fee for some or all of the initial fee, and substitutes a going-concern price for some construction. GDK’s transfer fee is 5 percent of the sale price; Great Greek’s is the greater of $29,500 or 10 percent, capped at the then-current franchise fee; Shah’s is 50 percent of the then-current franchise fee. Those are not Item 7 opening rows for a new build. A buyer of a resale should not use this chapter’s league table as the price of the store.

The injected comparison below sorts the itemised franchise-fee rows by high estimate. bluTaco will not be in it. Great Greek’s row will show the filing’s $35,550–$39,500 band; a first-time buyer still pays the high end of that band.