Freddy's Franchise Cost: Single Units Welcome, 3 States Closed

After a run of brands that quietly exclude single-unit buyers, Freddy’s is worth reading as the counter-example. It publishes a single-unit qualification tier with its own minimums, three separate per-format investment ranges instead of one blended number, and a royalty with its basis stated.

It also tells you which states are closed, including the one it was founded in. All of it comes from Freddy’s own franchising site, verified August 2, 2026. Every figure is a reported number to confirm in the current Franchise Disclosure Document, and none of it is an earnings figure.

The single-unit tier is the headline

This site has now checked around forty brands against their own franchising sites, and the recurring finding has been how many are not buyable the way a cost table implies. Yogurtland’s only domestic tier is labelled for multi-unit developers. Caribou requires ten locations. Charleys states a three-license minimum outright. Habit Burger asks for “a Habit Burger and Grill multi-unit franchisee” in the sentence that invites you to enquire.

Freddy’s publishes two tiers, and the first is for one restaurant. That is a small thing to put on a website and a large thing for a reader deciding whether to bother.

It is not a low bar in absolute terms, and the page is honest about that below. But a stated single-unit path means the question “will they sell to someone like me” has a published answer rather than an inferred one.

Investment, by format, which is how it should be published

Format	Total investment
In-line, no drive-thru	$785,936 to $1,198,665
End cap with drive-thru	$1,277,598 to $2,497,566
Standalone with drive-thru	$1,487,598 to $2,753,566

Three ranges rather than one is worth crediting specifically, because the single most common defect this site finds in franchise cost figures is the blend: a tracker, or sometimes the franchisor, flattens separate formats into one span that matches no real format and describes nothing anyone can buy. Dunkin’ publishes one blended range across five named formats. Ziggi’s blends three. Freddy’s does not.

Note what the formats cost. The drive-thru is not a trim level; it roughly doubles the floor. A buyer who has budgeted from the low end of a blended figure would be planning an in-line restaurant without realising it. Our Item 7 guide covers what that range includes and why the low end is rarely typical.

The ongoing fees are low for the category

Freddy’s charges 4.5 percent of gross sales in royalty and 1.5 percent in marketing, a combined 6 percent. For comparison, Wingstop runs about 11.5 percent, Church’s about 10, and Buffalo Wild Wings about 9.

That gap compounds for the life of the agreement and is worth more than a difference in franchise fee. Our Item 6 guide works through why the recurring percentage, not the one-time fee, decides long-run economics.

Where you cannot open one

Freddy’s publishes a state-by-state availability list, and three states are marked Not Available: Kansas, New Mexico and North Dakota. Everywhere else ranges from full availability through several openings to limited.

Kansas is the notable one. Freddy’s was founded in Wichita, and its home state is now closed to new franchisees. That is the same pattern as Church’s Texas Chicken listing Texas as limited to existing franchisees: a brand’s origin market is often the most saturated, and the earliest operators usually hold it.

Check your state on that list before anything else. Territory is the one constraint no amount of capital solves.

One conflict, and it lands on exactly the wrong reader

Freddy’s own two pages give different single-unit qualification figures:

Source	Single unit	Multi-unit
Its FAQ page	$250,000 liquid / $750,000 net worth	$400,000 liquid / $1,000,000 net worth
Its What It Takes page	$400,000+ liquid / $1,000,000+ net worth	$400,000+ liquid / $1,500,000+ net worth

Both are live. The multi-unit figures are close enough to read as a rounding; the single-unit ones are not, differing by $150,000 in liquid capital and $250,000 in net worth.

The irony is that this conflict falls precisely on the buyer the single-unit tier exists to serve. Someone with $300,000 liquid qualifies under one page and does not under the other. We are not picking the friendlier number or the more cautious one, because both choices would be guesses that change whether a real person applies. Ask which figure the current FDD carries.

One more caveat worth stating: a 25 percent veteran discount on the licence fee for a first restaurant circulates in industry coverage of Freddy’s, and we could not reproduce it on Freddy’s own site. If you are a veteran, ask directly rather than assuming it applies.

Questions to ask before you rely on any figure

• Which single-unit qualification figures are current, given that your FAQ and your What It Takes page differ by $150,000 in liquid capital?
• Is my state on the available list today, and what does “limited” mean in practice for it?
• Which format does the site I am considering actually support, since the drive-thru roughly doubles the investment floor?
• Is there a veteran discount on the licence fee, and what are its exact terms?
• What are the initial term and renewal conditions? Neither is published on the site.
• What does Item 20 show for openings, closures and transfers over the last three years?
• Will a franchise attorney and an accountant review the full FDD with me before I commit?