How Much a Coffee Franchise Really Costs in 2026

Every coffee franchise website has a number on it somewhere, and that number is almost never the number you’ll actually write a check for. The website says “starting at,” the franchise fee gets top billing because it’s the smallest figure on the page, and the real cost of opening the doors lives three clicks deeper in a document called the Franchise Disclosure Document.

We pulled Item 7 of the FDD, the section that legally has to show total investment, for eight coffee brands that currently sell franchises. Some ranges are tight. Some span more than a million dollars between the low and high end, because the same brand sells a 400-square-foot kiosk and a ground-up double-drive-thru building under one name. We’re not selling franchises and we don’t get paid when you buy one. We just read the filings so you don’t have to guess.

One brand you’ll see mentioned constantly in coffee franchise searches, Dutch Bros, is not on this list. Dutch Bros stopped offering new franchises to outside investors and now grows only through company-owned stores. If you see investment figures for Dutch Bros on a lead-gen site, they’re stale.

Franchise fee vs. total investment vs. working capital

These three terms get used interchangeably in casual conversation and that’s where a lot of the sticker-shock confusion starts.

Franchise fee is the upfront payment to the franchisor for the right to use the brand, the initial training, and access to the operating system. It’s due at signing, it’s usually non-refundable, and among the brands here it ranges from $7,000 (Caribou Coffee’s reduced fee for kiosks in airports, universities, or hospitals) to $90,000 (Dunkin’, at the top of its range). This fee is the number franchise ads lead with because it’s the smallest one on the page.

Total investment is everything: the franchise fee, plus real estate or leasehold improvements, construction, equipment, signage, point-of-sale systems, initial inventory, grand opening advertising, and working capital. This is the figure disclosed in Item 7 of the FDD, and it’s the one that actually determines whether you can afford to open. It’s presented as a range because it has to cover every format and every market the franchisor operates in.

Working capital is the cash reserve you need on hand after opening day, typically three months of operating expenses, to cover payroll, rent, and cost of goods before the store’s sales cover its bills. It’s usually the smallest single line inside total investment, but it’s the one people cut corners on when they’re stretched thin from construction overruns. Underfunding working capital is a common way profitable-on-paper stores run out of cash in month two.

If you want the item-by-item mechanics of how franchisors build this disclosure, we walk through it in FDD Item 7 explained.

Total investment by brand: drive-thru format

Drive-thru-first brands are the fastest-growing segment in coffee franchising right now, and they also carry some of the widest investment ranges because the format spans a small walk-up building to a full double-lane drive-thru on purchased land.

Brand	Total investment	Franchise fee	Source / filing year
7 Brew	$894,000 - $2,178,500	$75,000	2025 FDD (reference; applications paused in 2026)
Scooter’s Coffee	$794,000 - $1,300,000	$40,000	FDD Item 7, verified 2026-07-09
Dunkin’ (traditional, with drive-thru)	$526,900 - $1,832,500	Up to $90,000	2026-Q1 California FDD filing
Ziggi’s Coffee	$587,000 - $1,148,000 (endcap cafe with drive-thru) to $125,000 - $1.8M (full range, all formats)	$28,250 - $40,000	2026 FDD, figures vary by format and by tracker

7 Brew sits at the high end of this table because its buildout leans toward standalone structures with double drive-thru lanes and large canopy coverage, not retrofit space. As of 2026, though, 7 Brew states on its own support page that it is not accepting new franchise applications or expressions of interest, and is now expanding through a small number of large multi-unit development partners rather than new single-store owners, so treat its figures here as a cost reference, not a currently open path to buy in. Scooter’s Coffee, by contrast, has historically emphasized a smaller-footprint kiosk-style drive-thru that keeps the ceiling lower. Dunkin’s low end reflects a leased, existing-building conversion; its high end reflects ground-up construction with land acquisition.

On Ziggi’s, we’re flagging the disagreement directly rather than picking a number and hiding the mess: one tracker’s 2026 review shows $587,000 to $1,148,000 with a $40,000 franchise fee for an endcap cafe with drive-thru, while another site citing the 2026 FDD shows a full published range of $125,000 to $1.8 million with a $28,250 franchise fee across all formats. The spread looks like it reflects different formats (drive-thru-only versus cafe-with-drive-thru versus the full multi-format range) getting summarized differently by each tracker. If Ziggi’s is on your shortlist, request the current FDD directly rather than relying on any secondary figure, including ours.

For a side-by-side on how these drive-thru brands stack up on more than just cost, see our coffee franchise comparison.

Total investment by brand: full cafe format

Full cafe formats, the kind with indoor seating and a larger equipment package, tend to run in the middle of the pack, between the lean kiosk numbers and the land-heavy drive-thru builds.

Brand	Total investment	Franchise fee	Source / filing year
PJ’s Coffee (traditional)	$280,500 - $1,680,000 (full range across all formats)	$15,000 - $40,000	Official investment page, updated April 10, 2026
BIGGBY Coffee	$412,972 - $1,011,500	$20,000	2025 FDD
Ellianos Coffee	$612,000 - $899,000 (excludes real estate)	$25,000	2023 FDD
Caribou Coffee (chalet format)	$864,100 - $1,429,000 (excludes lease)	$30,000	2025 FDD

BIGGBY’s total investment ceiling sits noticeably below Ellianos and Caribou’s chalet format, which is worth noting if a lower entry cost matters more to you than footprint. Ellianos explicitly excludes real estate from its disclosed range, which means your actual out-of-pocket number depends heavily on whether you’re buying land, buying an existing building, or leasing. Always check whether a published range includes or excludes real estate before comparing two brands side by side, because that single exclusion can swing the comparison by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Ellianos figure here comes from a 2023 FDD review, the most recent one we could independently verify with a named source and date. Franchise terms change year to year, so treat that number as a starting point for your own research, not a current quote.

If the rows are starting to blur, slow down for a second. Behind every one of these ranges is the same picture: cars at the window at 7 a.m. and your name on the lease. The kiosk numbers below are where that picture gets cheapest to test, and where it picks up a landlord you don’t choose.

Total investment by brand: kiosk and non-traditional format

Kiosk and non-traditional placements, think grocery store end-caps, airport terminals, university unions, or hospital lobbies, are consistently the lowest entry point into a coffee brand, and they usually carry a reduced franchise fee to match.

Caribou Coffee’s kiosk format runs $279,100 to $703,000 in total investment, excluding lease costs, according to its 2025 FDD. The franchise fee for a Caribou kiosk drops as low as $7,000 for placements inside non-traditional venues like universities, airports, or hospitals, versus $15,000 for a standalone kiosk in a more conventional retail setting. That’s the widest fee-based discount we found across any brand on this list, and it reflects how much less support and territory protection a non-traditional placement typically carries compared to a full retail location.

If a kiosk is genuinely what you’re evaluating, not just the cheapest line in a brand’s range, we go deeper on the format specifically in coffee kiosk franchise.

Reading the range instead of the average

Every range in the tables above is wide enough to hide two very different businesses. A $600,000 low-end figure and a $1.4 million high-end figure inside the same brand usually means one of a few things: a leased retrofit versus ground-up construction, a smaller regional market versus a high-cost metro, or a compact drive-thru-only design versus a full cafe with seating.

Item 7 requires franchisors to disclose the low and high end of every store type they’re currently selling, which is exactly why brands that offer multiple formats show wider ranges than brands that sell one design everywhere. When a range feels enormous, the fix isn’t to average it. The fix is to ask the franchise development team which specific store type and market they’re actually proposing for you, then request the Item 7 breakdown for that specific format so you’re comparing your real numbers instead of the brand’s full published spread.

It’s also worth remembering that Item 19, the financial performance representation, is a separate disclosure from Item 7 and not every franchisor provides one. Item 7 tells you what you’ll spend. It says nothing about what you’ll make, and neither will we. If a brand’s Item 19 is thin or absent, that’s information too. We cover how to actually read that section in how to read a coffee franchise Item 19.

Where these dollars actually go

Across every brand in these tables, the total investment breaks into a handful of recurring categories, even though the dollar amounts differ:

Construction and leasehold improvements are usually the single largest line, often 40 to 60 percent of the total, and the one most sensitive to your specific site. A shell space that needs full electrical and plumbing work costs dramatically more than a former coffee or quick-service location with existing infrastructure.

Equipment is the second major category: espresso machines, brewers, walk-in coolers, POS systems, and drive-thru technology like order-confirmation boards. This is a fairly fixed cost across locations of the same format, which is part of why franchisors can disclose it with more precision than construction costs.

Signage, initial inventory, and grand-opening marketing round out the remaining categories, typically the smallest pieces of the total but not negligible, often running tens of thousands of dollars combined.

Working capital, as covered above, closes out the disclosure and is meant to carry the business through the startup period before it turns cash-flow positive. Franchisors set this at a minimum, usually three months of estimated expenses, but that’s a floor, not a guarantee your store hits breakeven by month three.

If financing any piece of this is part of your plan, our guide on SBA loans for franchise covers how lenders evaluate these Item 7 numbers when you apply.

The questions to ask before you trust any number

A published Item 7 range, ours or anyone else’s, is a starting point for due diligence, not a final quote. Before you treat any total investment figure as real for your situation, get direct answers from the franchisor’s development team on three things: which specific format and store size they’re proposing for your market, what your local real estate and construction costs actually run compared to the FDD’s disclosed range, and how many months of working capital they recommend beyond the FDD’s stated minimum given your specific location’s expected ramp-up period.

Then take that conversation to current franchisees, not just the ones the franchisor refers you to. Item 21 of the FDD lists every franchisee’s contact information, and calling five to ten of them who opened in the last two years will tell you more about whether the published range matched reality than any article, including this one. We’ve put together a list of questions to ask franchisees that’s built specifically around surfacing gaps between what Item 7 says and what owners actually spent.

For the full methodology behind how we source and verify every figure on this site, see our editorial methodology page.