Franchise Earnings by Category: Full FDD Breakdown

"How much will I make?" is the first question every prospective franchisee asks. The franchise industry's answer is usually vague: "It depends." But it does not have to be vague. Item 19 of the Franchise Disclosure Document provides actual revenue and sometimes net income data, audited and filed with state regulators.

We aggregated Item 19 data across the 1,300+ franchise brands that publish an average gross-sales figure and organized it by category. Here is what franchise units actually take in, broken down by the 15 categories with at least 10 comparable brands.

Average gross sales by franchise category

Revenue tells half the story. Net income tells the rest.

Gross sales are not profit. Few FDDs disclose net income, and the ones that do define it differently, so this table stops at revenue. The gap between revenue and what the owner keeps varies enormously by category.

That gap matters because it determines how much the franchisee actually takes home after paying royalties, rent, labor, supplies, and debt service. A high-revenue category with thin margins can leave owners with less income than a lower-revenue category with thick margins, which is why the franchisees listed in an FDD are worth calling before you trust any revenue column.

The capital efficiency gap

The most striking finding is how much more efficiently some categories convert investment into revenue (average gross sales over the average high end of the Item 7 range):

• Real Estate: $1.7M revenue / $316K investment = 5.3x
• Home Services: $1.3M revenue / $285K investment = 4.5x
• Senior Care: $1.2M revenue / $308K investment = 3.9x
• Business Services: $1.1M revenue / $357K investment = 3.0x
• Cleaning: $957K revenue / $344K investment = 2.8x
• Healthcare: $1.3M revenue / $595K investment = 2.2x
• Retail: $970K revenue / $564K investment = 1.7x
• QSR: $1.1M revenue / $911K investment = 1.2x
• Full-Service Restaurants: $2.1M revenue / $2.1M investment = 1.0x
• Personal Care: $682K revenue / $693K investment = 1.0x
• Education: $909K revenue / $927K investment = 1.0x
• Automotive: $1.4M revenue / $1.5M investment = 0.9x
• Health & Fitness: $614K revenue / $750K investment = 0.8x
• Pet Services: $774K revenue / $1.0M investment = 0.8x
• Recreation: $1.2M revenue / $1.7M investment = 0.7x

Quick-service restaurants average $1.1M in gross sales against $1.3M for home services, but ask for 3.2x the capital at the high end. This is the fundamental structural disadvantage of brick-and-mortar food concepts: real estate, equipment, and buildout consume capital that service businesses deploy into people and marketing.

Where charge-off rates are lowest

If you overlay SBA charge-off rates onto this data, the categories whose borrowers repaid most reliably are:

• Healthcare: $1.3M average gross sales, 7.2% SBA charge-off rate.
• Senior Care: $1.2M average gross sales, 8.2% SBA charge-off rate.
• Education: $909K average gross sales, 10.6% SBA charge-off rate.

The riskiest categories by charge-off rate — Home Services (22.1%) and Automotive (21.4%) — require more careful brand selection. Not all brands within a risky category are risky, and not all brands in a safe category are safe. Brand-level analysis always trumps category averages; lists like our best senior care franchises go a level deeper.

Which categories deliver the best owner take-home?

Revenue grabs headlines, but take-home income is what pays the mortgage, and this is where FDD data runs out: most filings disclose gross sales and stop. A ranking of categories by take-home income would be a ranking of estimates. What the data does show is how much capital each category asks for and how often its SBA borrowers repaid, and those two columns are where to start.

Senior care deserves special attention from prospective franchisees. It averages $1.2M in gross sales on a $308K average high-end investment, with a 8.2% SBA charge-off rate. Add the demographic tailwind of 10,000 Americans turning 65 every day through 2030, and senior care offers a rare combination of growing demand and manageable capital. The category is also less sensitive to economic cycles than discretionary spending categories like recreation or personal care — people need home health aides regardless of GDP growth.

The verdict

Average gross sales vary 3.4x across categories, from $614K in Health & Fitness to $2.1M in Full-Service Restaurants. But raw revenue is not the metric that matters most. Capital efficiency (revenue-to-investment ratio) and costs determine what actually ends up in the franchisee's pocket. The categories that pair a high revenue-to-investment ratio with a low charge-off rate deserve the first look. Restaurants deliver brand recognition and social proof but at a significant capital cost.

Browse every category and filter by revenue, investment, and Verdict Score on the franchise screener.

Methodology

Revenue is the Item 19 average gross sales of each brand's most recent FDD, counted only where it is comparable (an annual, per-outlet figure). Investment is the high end of the Item 7 range. Category averages weight brands equally; categories with fewer than 10 comparable brands are left out. SBA data from 7(a) loan records. See our full methodology.

Our take

The most important insight from this data is that the franchises people want to own and the franchises that convert capital into revenue best are two different lists. QSR and restaurant brands dominate franchise buyer interest because of brand familiarity, but they sit low in the capital efficiency ranking. Real Estate, Home Services and Senior Care lead it — categories most prospective buyers never consider. If you are choosing a franchise category, start with the revenue-to-investment column and the SBA default column, not the revenue column. A franchise that generates $1.5M in revenue on a $600K investment is a different business from one that generates $1.5M on $225K. The data is unambiguous on this point, even if the brand name is less exciting.

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