Does MOD Pizza Franchise in 2026? Yes, Since 2024

Yes, MOD Pizza franchises in 2026, and it has been actively looking for new franchisees since a nationwide refranchising push was announced in September 2024, not 2025 as a lot of recycled coverage still says. That one-year slip matters if you’re trying to figure out how far along MOD actually is, so this piece starts by fixing the date, then walks through what MOD’s own franchising page says today, what independent franchise-cost trackers report for the investment, and two other fast-casual pizza brands that are also franchising right now.

FranchiseFeast does not sell franchises and is not paid by any brand named here. Every figure below is attributed to where it came from, MOD’s own site, trade press, or a third-party tracker, and marked accordingly when it has not been independently verified against MOD’s actual Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD).

Does MOD Pizza franchise in 2026?

Yes. As of July 2026, MOD Pizza is actively franchising, and has been since its current owner launched a push to sell franchised locations in September 2024. That timing is worth being precise about, because a fair amount of coverage repeats a “2025 relaunch” framing that is a year off. The actual announcement, that MOD’s owner hired a brokerage to lead the refranchising effort, happened in September 2024. Anything you read that treats 2025 as the start date is describing a chapter of this story that had already been running for months.

The actual timeline: from a near-bankruptcy sale to a refranchising push

MOD’s current chapter starts in July 2024, when Elite Restaurant Group acquired 100% of MOD Pizza’s equity. Restaurant Dive, reporting the deal on July 10, 2024, wrote that the transaction came several months after the chain closed underperforming locations and would help it avoid a bankruptcy it was reportedly considering.

On size, use the figures the reporting actually carries rather than the ones that circulate. Restaurant Dive put MOD at 465 company-owned units and 87 franchised at the end of 2023, and at more than 540 locations system wide as of January 2024. A frequently repeated breakdown of 512 total units split 423 company-owned and 89 franchised traces back to a different outlet we could not load directly, so we are not repeating it as fact.

Two months later, in a Restaurant Dive report dated September 13, 2024, Elite engaged the brokerage National Franchise Sales to lead a nationwide effort to refranchise MOD’s locations, meaning to sell company-owned units to franchisees and grow the footprint through new franchise agreements rather than continuing to run every store itself. That is the actual starting point for the “MOD is franchising again” story you may have seen, and it is dated to September 2024, not 2025.

What MOD’s own franchising page says today, and does not say

Checked directly at modpizza.com/franchising/ as of July 2026, MOD’s page is open and actively inviting inquiries. It tells prospective franchisees, “If you’re in a state without a MOD, and you’d like to learn more, we’d love to hear from you,” and describes the kind of buyer it wants: it says it’s looking for “a select group of innovators” with “substantial capital resources.”

What the page does not do is publish any investment figures. There is no franchise fee listed, no total investment range, no royalty percentage, none of the numbers you’d expect on a typical Item 7 summary page. If you want those figures from MOD directly, the path is to request its FDD, not to read them off the marketing page.

The investment figures you’ll see online: tracker-sourced, not company-published

Because MOD doesn’t publish its own numbers, most of what circulates about the cost of a MOD Pizza franchise comes from third-party franchise-cost trackers rather than from MOD itself. At least one such tracker reports a total investment range of $925,000 to $1,221,000, a $30,000 franchise fee, and a royalty of 5% plus a 2% contribution to an ad fund, citing a 2026 FDD.

Note what that royalty figure does not tell you: what the 5% is actually charged against. The tracker does not say. That missing base is not a detail, because the same 5% produces materially different bills depending on what it is calculated on, and an FDD states the base explicitly where a tracker summary does not. A percentage with no stated denominator is not a number you can plan against, and it is one of the specific things to look for when you read the real document.

Treat those figures as a starting point, not a verified fact. FranchiseFeast has not independently confirmed them against MOD’s actual Franchise Disclosure Document, and a tracker’s summary of an FDD is a secondhand read of a legal document, not the document itself. If MOD Pizza is a serious candidate for you, request the current FDD directly rather than budgeting around a number you found on a listing site, including this one.

How many MOD Pizza locations are there, really?

Even something as basic as MOD’s current unit count is not settled. Different trackers put the total system size anywhere from roughly 449 to 482 locations as of 2026. That is a wide enough gap that neither number should be treated as precise. If a specific unit count matters to your decision, ask MOD directly for a current count rather than relying on any single third-party source, this one included.

Pizza franchise alternatives if MOD isn’t the fit

If you’re comparing MOD against other fast-casual, build-your-own pizza concepts, two other brands franchise as of 2026, and the contrast with MOD is instructive on its own.

Blaze Pizza publishes on its own franchising page, as loaded July 31, 2026, what MOD does not publish anywhere: a $757,000 to $1.297 million initial investment, a $30,000 franchise fee, a “5% royalty fee based on gross sales” and “a 2% national marketing contribution”, $200,000-plus liquid capital and $500,000-plus net worth, and 240-plus locations. It also names the markets it is targeting, across the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, South Central and West Coast, with California and Florida marked limited. Note especially that Blaze states the royalty BASIS, gross sales, which is the exact detail missing from the tracker figure quoted for MOD earlier on this page.

Pieology publishes far less, and there is something more important about it than the missing figures. Its franchising FAQ still says it is “actively looking [for] the right new franchisees to sign agreements” and that a restaurant costs around $500,000 to build, with locations in five countries, but it does not publish a franchise fee, a royalty rate, or a unit count.

What that page also does not mention is that its franchisor filed for bankruptcy. Franchise Times reported on the filing, stating that “The Little Brown Box Pizza, the franchisor of the build-your-own pizza concept Pieology, filed in the Central District of California December 8.” The case is docketed as 8:25-bk-13452-MH, with a jointly administered affiliate, Kustom Partner LLC, at 8:25-bk-13453; a notice of sale filed in April 2026 sits on the bankruptcy court’s own website. Reported location counts differ by outlet, with Franchise Times and Restaurant Dive putting the brand at 45 locations around the time of the filing and Nation’s Restaurant News saying fewer than 70, so treat any single count as approximate. We are not characterizing where the case stands today, because the public docket is still moving and we could not pull it directly.

None of that makes Pieology’s recruitment page false. A brand can solicit franchisees while its franchisor is in Chapter 11, and this is exactly why the FTC Franchise Rule puts bankruptcy in its own mandatory disclosure item. Under 16 CFR 436.5(d), an FDD must disclose bankruptcy filings involving the franchisor, any parent, predecessor, or affiliate, and its officers and general partners, covering “the 10-year period immediately before the date of this disclosure document.” A franchisor’s marketing page is not required to tell you any of this. Item 4 is. That gap, between what a recruitment page says and what the disclosure document must say, is the single best argument for never making a decision from a franchising website.

That spread is the practical lesson, and note where MOD sits in it. Blaze publishes a full set of figures on its own page, Pieology publishes one build-cost number, and MOD publishes none at all, which is why the only figures available for MOD anywhere on this page came from a third-party tracker rather than from MOD itself. Even Blaze’s numbers are still marketing until you read them in its Item 5, Item 6 and Item 7. Compare disclosure documents, not franchising pages. For a wider view of pizza franchise costs across brands, see our pizza franchise cost breakdown and our cheapest pizza franchises ranking.

For how we source and verify every figure on this site, see our editorial methodology before you build your own shortlist.