RESTAURANTS : Franchise Files: Piecing it All Together

Research evidence excerpt

RESTAURANTS : Franchise Files: Piecing it All Together

EQUITIES

RESTAURANTS

Franchise Files: Piecing it All Together

What’s our incremental learning after reviewing ~23K pages of FDDs (for the second time)11 JUNE 2026

Sector Research Report Over the past several months, we dissected Burgers, Chicken, Pizza/Subs, Coffee, through ~23K

Production time: 11:26* (London time) pages of Franchise Disclosure Documents spanning across ~60 chains and ~163K locations. While

Research Analysts & Publishing Entities each category has unique dynamics, a handful of themes consistently emerged: returns remain

Steve McManus concentrated among a small group of operators, growth is increasingly clustering in the same

BNP Paribas Securities Corp1 development markets, and rising development costs are making franchise economics more(+1) 347 899 5065

Stephen.Mcmanus@us.bnpparibas.com important than ever. We’ve tracked, analysed every possible KPI – it’s our most requested database.

Ken Deng Five Key Conclusions: The FDD filings reveal what headline data missesBNP Paribas Securities Corp1

(+1) 631 568 6767 1) The leaders keep leading. Scale alone is not enough - concepts with compelling unit economics

kaiyuan.deng@us.bnpparibas.com and format relevance continue to capture development and market share, while lower-return brands

face mounting challenges and share loss. Across categories, Chick-fil-A, Wingstop, Dominos, Jersey

Mikes, and McDonalds continue to stand out on a combination of scale, sales productivity, and cash-

on-cash returns while Daves, Checker’s and KFC screen as least attractive structurally (Figure 1).

2) Coffee and Chicken remain the industry’s growth engines. Both categories delivered some of