How we research, and how to check us
This page is the contract behind every guide on the site. It explains where our numbers come from, what we will never publish, and how to hold us to it.
Where franchise figures come from
Franchise investment and fee figures come from public Franchise Disclosure Documents, primarily Item 5 (initial fees), Item 6 (other fees), Item 7 (estimated initial investment), and Item 19 (financial performance representations), plus franchisor disclosures and reputable aggregators of FDD data. Every brand figure on this site carries its source and, where we have it, the FDD filing year. FDDs are refiled annually, so a figure that was accurate at publication can drift within a year. That is why every money page tells you to verify against the current FDD, and it is why we date our checks.
What we will never publish
- Earnings claims or income projections. The FTC Franchise Rule tightly restricts financial performance representations for good reason. We explain how to read a brand's Item 19; we never predict your income or promise a result.
- Invented testing. We research from documents and specifications. When we have not physically used a product, we do not pretend otherwise. Equipment recommendations are grounded in manufacturer spec sheets and verified listings, and each product card says where its specs come from.
- Unsourced statistics. If we cannot trace a number to a named source, it does not appear, even when a competitor site prints it confidently.
- Fake authors, invented credentials, or paid placements dressed up as rankings.
How our pages are made
We use AI tools in research and drafting, and we are specific about what that means. For every guide, sources are fetched and read during research, not recalled from memory: manufacturer spec sheets, FDD filings, government and standards-body pages. Drafts are then checked in multiple review passes before publication: every figure is traced back to its source and cut if it cannot be, claims are challenged by a separate adversarial review, and the writing is edited for clarity. What the tools never do is invent a test we did not run, a statistic we cannot trace, or an author who does not exist. The methodology note on each guide tells you how that specific page was researched, and the sources list at the bottom shows you exactly what we read.
Equipment guides
Product picks are compared on manufacturer specifications: rated output, boiler type and count, power requirements, capacity, warranty. Prices are deliberately absent from our pages, because printed prices go stale and Amazon prices move constantly; the retailer's page is the only honest place for a price. Affiliate links are disclosed at the top of any page that contains them.
Independence
No franchisor, broker, or manufacturer pays for coverage, placement, or ranking position on this site. Revenue comes from disclosed affiliate commissions, advertising, and referral fees from an independent franchise-development partner we may connect opted-in readers with; none of it touches editorial decisions. We are not a franchise broker and take no money from any franchisor, and a referral fee is paid by our partner regardless of which franchise, if any, a reader chooses.
Corrections
When a reader or a re-check shows a figure is wrong or stale, we correct the page, update its "last checked" date, and keep the correction. If a current FDD in your hands disagrees with a number here, send it in. You will be right more often than not, because your document is newer, and that is exactly how this is supposed to work.