The low column and the high column

Two columns sit side by side in Item 7, and they are not two versions of the same project. The high column is an estimate of exposure under the franchisor’s stated assumptions. The low column is a stack of individually favourable endpoints, each resting on an assumption the filing may or may not name, added together into a figure that no single restaurant necessarily matches. The columns look symmetrical on the page and are asymmetrical in what they claim.

The practical consequence is that the low total is the harder of the two to use. A buyer can at least ask whether the high column contemplated the site in question. Asking the same of the low column means asking twenty separate questions, one per row, because the low figure was assembled row by row.

The low column is added, not observed

German Doner Kebab’s 2024 low of $690,500 is the sum of twenty low cells. One of those cells, Leasehold Improvements, is $0. Three others in the same construction group are not: Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing is $150,000–$175,000, Fit Out Materials & Installation is $175,000–$205,000, and Architects and Project Manager Fees are $30,000–$50,000. A premises that genuinely required no leasehold improvements would be a very particular kind of room, and nothing in the table says that same room also produces the low end of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work. The second-generation versus shell chapter tests that assumption physically. The point here is arithmetical: the low total assumes every favourable condition holds at once.

That is why the low column so rarely describes anything a contractor would recognise. It is a column of best cases, not a bid on a cheap version of the restaurant. The construction chapter shows the same structure in five different label schemes.

Four kinds of cell, only one of which is a range

Reading a column means reading what each cell is doing. Four patterns appear in the itemised filings here, and they carry different information.

Pattern	Example from the filings	What it states
A true range	Shah’s Halal Food, Build-Out/Construction, $80,000–$160,000 (2024)	The cost varies with the site and the franchisor has bracketed it
A fixed amount	Mad for Chicken, Grand Opening Advertising, $15,000–$15,000 (2025)	One figure, disclosed twice
A zero low on a substantial row	German Doner Kebab, Leasehold Improvements, $0–$250,000 (2024)	Under some site assumption the cost does not arise
A zero at both ends	German Doner Kebab, Property Agent, $0–$0 (2024)	The franchisor expects no payment on this row

Great Greek’s 2023 Real Estate Service Charge of $0–$3,500 is the third pattern at a small scale: a genuine range whose floor happens to be nothing, as is Döner Haus’s 2026 Pre-opening Travel Expense of $0–$3,000. Neither is the fourth pattern, and the difference matters when a reader is deciding which rows to carry onto a project budget. A row that can be zero has to be priced anyway. A row that is zero at both ends has been disclosed as not applicable under the franchisor’s assumptions, which is still worth a question about whose service the row would have paid for.

None of these is the same as a row that is absent. Great Greek’s 2023 table has no signage row and no technology row; Mad for Chicken’s 2025 table and 375°’s 2024 table have no miscellaneous row. Silence is not a zero, and the what the range hides chapter treats that distinction as the central discipline of the whole exercise.

A fixed amount usually means the franchisor set the price

Look at which rows collapse to a single figure. Every itemised filing here fixes its initial franchise fee: $30,000 at German Doner Kebab and Shah’s, $35,000 at Mad for Chicken and Döner Haus, $40,000 at 375°. Great Greek’s fee is the exception at $35,550–$39,500, and the franchise fee chapter explains why — the low end is a discount available to owners of affiliated brands, so that band describes two classes of buyer rather than two prices for the same buyer.

Mad for Chicken fixes Grand Opening Advertising at $15,000 and 375° fixes it at $10,000, both amounts a franchisor can specify because a launch programme is a defined deliverable. Great Greek fixes its Design and Project Management Fee at $10,000 for the same reason, while leaving leasehold improvements to run $250,000–$650,000. The pattern is not a rule, though. Mad for Chicken’s 2024 Insurance row is fixed at $2,500, and insurance is a third-party premium that varies with carrier, jurisdiction, coverage limits, and the landlord’s requirements. A single figure there is an estimate presented without a band, which the insurance chapter treats as the reason not to read $2,500 as a quote.

Width is not risk, and the widest cells are not the largest

The widest single cell here is Great Greek’s 2023 Leasehold Improvements at $250,000–$650,000, a disclosed swing of $400,000 — within $5,000 of Shah’s entire 2024 printed high total of $405,000. German Doner Kebab’s leasehold row swings $250,000 from a zero floor. Mad for Chicken’s Leasehold Improvements, Construction and/or Remodeling swings $160,000.

Proportionally the picture inverts. 375°’s 2024 Your Training Expenses runs $100–$5,000, a fifty-fold band, and it is one of the smallest rows in the table. Shah’s Travel Expenses to Attend Training runs $2,000–$20,000. Wide bands on small rows usually mean the franchisor cannot know something about the buyer — where they live, how many people travel, how long they stay — rather than that the cost is volatile. The training costs chapter reads those rows as travel, not tuition.

Meanwhile German Doner Kebab’s Hardware and Software at $27,500–$30,000 is a narrow band on a substantial row, which is what a specified package looks like when the franchisor controls the specification. Narrow is not safe and wide is not dangerous. Both describe how much the franchisor knows.

Check the columns separately

Add the low column. Add the high column. Compare each with the printed total before comparing anything with another filing. The columns can fail independently: Shah’s fifteen 2024 low cells sum to $197,000, which is the printed low, while the same fifteen high cells sum to $410,000 against a printed high of $405,000. One column adds and one does not, and the generated Shah’s cost page reports both figures rather than adjusting a row to close the gap. That $5,000 is a fact about the document.

A column-level check also catches the more common reader error, which is building a “likely case” by taking some rows at their low and others at their high. There is nothing wrong with doing that on a project budget — it is what a project budget is — but the result is not an Item 7 figure and should not be presented as one, and it should not be compared with another brand’s printed total.

Reading both columns without averaging them

1. Write the format statement and filing year above both columns.
2. For each low cell, note the assumption that produces it: a reusable premises, a discount, a shorter travel, a landlord contribution, a franchisor-specified package.
3. Mark every fixed cell and ask who set the price.
4. Mark every zero and classify it: zero floor on a real range, zero at both ends, or an absent row.
5. Sum each column and write the printed total beside it. If they disagree, keep both.
6. Carry the high column into the cash plan and the assumptions into the questions you still have to ask, then replace both with quotes as from Item 7 to a site budget describes.
7. Never present a midpoint as a typical project, and never build one by averaging the two totals.

The how to read Item 7 sequence puts this step fourth, after the labels and the footnotes, because a column cannot be interpreted before the rows are understood. The low column is the franchisor’s most optimistic reading of its own assumptions. The high column is the number to plan against. Neither is a budget, and the space between them is not a probability.