Question 1

Is Giordano’s® Restaurants or Buffalo’s Cafe cheaper to open?

Accepted Answer

Giordano’s® Restaurants costs $1,565,000–$2,056,000 and Buffalo’s Cafe costs $857,300–$2,930,600 to open (FDD Item 7). Buffalo’s Cafe has the lower entry cost.

Question 2

Which earns more, Giordano’s® Restaurants or Buffalo’s Cafe?

Accepted Answer

Giordano’s® Restaurants reports $1,846,407 average annual unit revenue vs $2,350,384 for Buffalo’s Cafe (FDD Item 19). Buffalo’s Cafe is higher. For Giordano’s® Restaurants: Item 19 of this FDD reports outlet performance by restaurant format and location, and separately for franchised and company-owned restaurants, and states no single system-wide average. The figure shown here is not one the filing publishes; the cohorts it does disclose are listed with it.; Reported for a subset of outlets rather than the whole system. For Buffalo’s Cafe: Reported as net sales, not gross sales.

Question 3

Which is the better franchise, Giordano’s® Restaurants or Buffalo’s Cafe?

Accepted Answer

FranchiseVerdict grades Giordano’s® Restaurants B and Buffalo’s Cafe B, from FDD Items 5–7, 19–21 and SBA loan performance. See the full side-by-side above.

Metric	Giordano’s® Restaurants	Buffalo’s Cafe
Verdict Grade	BAbove average	BAbove average
Investment Range	$1.6M – $2.1M	$857K – $2.9M
Franchise Fee	$40K	$50K
Royalty Rate	6.0%	6.0%
Average Revenue (Item 19)	$1.8MCohort-only Item 19 · Outlet subset	$2.4M
SBA Charge-Off Rate	Limited data	N/A
Total Units	60	12
Unit Growth (YoY)	-1 units	-1 units
Year Began Franchising	1980	1989
FDD Year	2025	2025

Giordano’s® Restaurants vs Buffalo’s Cafe