Soft costs

Soft costs are the opening expenses that are not construction, equipment, or the franchise fee: professional services, training travel, insurance, licenses, and the miscellaneous lines filings use for everything else. They are small next to leasehold improvements and still able to exhaust cash because they come due together, often before a loan draw for hard costs.

This page is a grouping, not a new Item 7 bucket. The dataset codes professional, training, insurance, licenses, and other as five leagues. Adding them inside one filing is a way to see the cluster. Adding Shah’s legal row to GDK’s training row is not.

Worked example: add the named soft rows inside each filing

The table below adds, for each brand, every row this dataset codes as professional, training, insurance, licenses, or other. Construction, equipment, packages, signage, technology, inventory, grand opening, real estate, franchise fee, and working capital stay out.

Brand	Rows included	Low	High
German Doner Kebab	Professional Fees; Insurance; Initial Training; Business Licenses; Office Supplies & Misc.	$26,500	$53,000
Shah’s Halal Food	Travel Expenses to Attend Training; Insurance; Licenses, Permits; Legal & Accounting; Marketing Supplies; Miscellaneous Opening Costs	$19,000	$61,000
The Great Greek	Travel and Living Expenses (while attending training); Insurance; Utility Deposits/Licenses; Opening Assistance	$13,500	$31,000
Mad for Chicken	Your Training Expenses; Business Licenses and Permits; Professional Fees; Insurance	$10,500	$20,500
375° Chicken ‘n Fries	Your Training Expenses; Business Licenses and Permits; Professional Fees; Insurance	$6,600	$20,000

Those sums are additions of disclosed lines. They are not a standardized “soft cost” product.

Shah’s high of $61,000 is the largest cluster, and it is carried in part by training travel of $2,000–$20,000 and miscellaneous opening costs of $5,000–$15,000. GDK’s high of $53,000 is next, carried by insurance of $9,000–$18,000 and professional fees of $10,000–$15,000. Great Greek’s cluster is smaller because architecture sits in construction ($10,000 design fee) and grand opening sits in the restaurant package. Mad for Chicken and 375° look modest in this grouping because their large additional-funds rows ($51,375–$162,000 and $30,000–$60,000) are working capital, not soft costs.

What each piece is for

Professional fees are counsel and accountants, with architects often next door in construction. GDK $10,000–$15,000; Shah’s legal and accounting $3,000–$6,000; Mad for Chicken $2,500–$7,000; 375° $2,000–$5,000; Great Greek silent as a professional row.

Training costs in Item 7 are usually travel and living, not tuition. GDK $5,000–$10,000; Shah’s $2,000–$20,000; Great Greek $10,000–$20,000; Mad for Chicken $3,000–$6,000; 375° $100–$5,000.

Insurance is the opening premium or deposit, not a lifetime policy. GDK $9,000–$18,000; Shah’s $6,000–$10,000; Great Greek $2,000–$6,000; Mad for Chicken $2,500; 375° $2,500–$5,000.

Licenses and permits may include utility deposits. GDK $1,000–$5,000; Shah’s $1,000–$3,000; Great Greek $1,000–$3,000 combined with utility deposits; Mad for Chicken $2,500–$5,000; 375° $2,000–$5,000.

Other is the remainder. GDK Office Supplies & Misc. $1,500–$5,000. Shah’s Marketing Supplies $2,000–$7,000 plus Miscellaneous Opening Costs $5,000–$15,000. Great Greek Opening Assistance $500–$2,000. Mad for Chicken and 375° have no other-bucket row in Item 7.

What this grouping deliberately leaves out

Grand opening is a campaign, treated on its own page: GDK $10,000–$15,000; Shah’s $1,000–$5,000; Mad for Chicken $15,000; 375° $10,000; Great Greek included in the package. Inventory is product: GDK $15,000–$20,000; Shah’s $10,000–$30,000; Great Greek $7,000–$15,000; Mad for Chicken $14,250–$28,200; 375° $5,000–$10,000. Deposits are held cash. Working capital is the initial-period reserve. Folding those into “soft costs” would recreate Item 7 under a new name.

The franchise fee is a right-to-open payment, not a professional service. Great Greek’s $35,550–$39,500 band, including the affiliated-brand discount, stays on the franchise fee page.

Why the cluster still matters

Soft costs are due on a closing calendar: entity formation before the franchise agreement, lease counsel before execution, deposits and licenses before construction, insurance before the landlord will hand over keys, training travel before opening week. Hard-cost loan draws often lag that calendar. GDK’s additional funds of $15,000–$20,000 for three months will not pay $53,000 of clustered soft costs if those invoices land before opening. They were never supposed to; they are different rows. The cash plan has to see them on the same month.

The FTC’s startup discussion in the consumer guide puts professional advice and living expenses next to the opening estimate for this reason. The SBA startup-cost worksheet separates one-time from monthly. Soft costs in Item 7 are one-time. Insurance renewals, professional bookkeeping, and permit renewals after opening are monthly, and they belong in working capital.

Soft-cost checklist

1. List professional, training, insurance, licenses, and other rows from the filing you are actually buying, using the original labels.
2. Add them inside that filing only, as in the table above.
3. Pull architecture out of the sum if you are trying to compare “legal and accounting” across brands — or leave it in and say so.
4. Put each invoice on a pre-opening calendar with the deposit and fee dates.
5. Do not fund the cluster from the additional-funds line unless the footnote says those invoices are included.
6. Carry the same list onto the printable worksheet.

A second pass: share of each brand’s high total

Using the same clustered sums against each filing’s printed high total:

Brand	Soft-cost cluster high	Item 7 high	Cluster as share of high
German Doner Kebab	$53,000	$1,123,000	5%
Shah’s Halal Food	$61,000	$405,000	15%
The Great Greek	$31,000	$1,088,560	3%
Mad for Chicken	$20,500	$687,700	3%
375° Chicken ‘n Fries	$20,000	$521,500	4%

Shah’s 15 percent is the outlier because the total is smaller and because training travel and miscellaneous opening costs are wide. Great Greek’s 3 percent is low because design and grand opening live in other buckets. These shares are a way to see the cluster, not a ranking of professionalism or compliance.

Miscellaneous is the row that most often absorbs a cost this grouping already counted. Shah’s Miscellaneous Opening Costs of $5,000–$15,000 is inside the $61,000 high. Do not add a second miscellaneous line on the project budget for “soft costs” on top of it. GDK’s Office Supplies & Misc. of $1,500–$5,000 is narrower. Great Greek’s Opening Assistance of $500–$2,000 is narrower still. If a real invoice — a dumpster, a locksmith, a temporary toilet — does not fit those labels, put it on the worksheet as a site quote against the closest filing row, and explain the difference.

Pre-opening payroll for people who are not in the Item 11 training-attendee list is the large cost this grouping still excludes. It is labor, it is working capital or a separate pre-opening line, and it is not professional fees. The training costs chapter covers travel; the working capital chapter covers wages.

Print the cluster next to the hard-cost calendar so the invoices are visible in the same months as contractor draws.

There is no injected league table on this page, because soft costs are five buckets. The linked chapters each inject the comparison for one of them.