Jamba Franchise Cost: Its Parent Publishes One Fee Table

Jamba is owned by GoTo Foods, which also owns Auntie Anne’s, Cinnabon, Carvel, Moe’s, McAlister’s and Schlotzsky’s. That ownership produces something genuinely useful and rare: one fee table, covering every brand in the group, published openly.

One table, several brands, same format

Most cost comparisons on this site are assembled by reading a dozen franchisor sites that each present their terms differently, when they present them at all. Culver’s publishes no fee, investment range or royalty. GoTo Foods does the opposite: its process page carries the fee terms for its brands together.

The result is a comparison a buyer could otherwise never make cleanly. Jamba’s royalty is 6 percent of net sales. Auntie Anne’s, in the same table, on the same basis, is 7 percent. That is a full percentage point of ongoing difference between two brands under the same corporate roof, visible in one place, without requesting a single document.

The basis is net sales, and it is undefined here too

Both the royalty and the marketing fee are stated as percentages of net sales.

Net-sales billing is more common than a comparison table suggests. Alongside Jamba, at least Robeks, Del Taco, Your Pie, PJ’s Coffee and Scooter’s Coffee all charge on net sales among the brands covered here. What Jamba shares with Robeks specifically is that the term is left undefined.

Until you see the deduction list in the Franchise Agreement, “6 percent of net sales” is not comparable with Smoothie King’s 6 percent of gross or Playa Bowls’ 6 percent of gross, even though all three read as the same number. Whenever you see a royalty percentage, find the basis before you compare it with anything. Our Item 6 guide covers where that lives in the disclosure document.

Co-branding has its own disclosed terms

The fee table discloses something most brands never address: what happens when a store carries two of the parent’s brands at once.

For Auntie Anne’s co-branded stores, the marketing fee is split, with 2 percent of net sales attributed to Auntie Anne’s and 3 percent attributed to Jamba. GoTo Foods has publicly reported signing 353 co-brand deals across 173 locations in 24 states, naming Jamba among the brands involved, so this is an active structure rather than a hypothetical clause.

If you are considering a co-branded location, that split is the beginning of the questions rather than the end. Two brands in one box means two sets of standards, two supply relationships and two sets of obligations, and only the marketing split is published. Our guide to what co-branding actually means for a franchisee covers the operational side.

One format has a price, five formats are listed

The published investment range is $481,000 to $941,000, and it is explicitly for a traditional store without a drive-thru.

The same page lists the available formats as traditional, drive-thru, kiosk, non-traditional and in-line. No dollar range is published for the other four. Given what Smoothie King’s disclosure showed about format spread, where a free-standing drive-thru runs to nearly four times the low end of an end-cap, the missing ranges are likely to be the interesting ones.

The initial franchise fee is $35,500, with no format-specific variation published.

One unresolved discrepancy, stated rather than hidden: a trade-press profile of Jamba carries two different investment ranges, neither matching the franchisor’s live page. The most likely explanation is different disclosure-document vintages, but we could not confirm that, so the franchisor’s own current figure is the one used here.

Qualification, scale and where you cannot go

$120,000 minimum liquid capital and $300,000 minimum net worth. That is the lowest entry requirement among the smoothie brands covered here, below Robeks at $125,000, Smoothie King and Playa Bowls at $150,000.

GoTo Foods advertises 700-plus locations across 30-plus states, dated December 2025. Trade press reported 788 total units as of September 2025 and described the system as 100 percent franchised, meaning no company-owned locations. One caveat we are stating rather than smoothing over: the same profile’s published rows, 726 US franchised and 61 international franchised, sum to 787 rather than 788. A single unit is unaccounted for in the breakdown, and we could not resolve which row it belongs to. A fully franchised system puts all the operating capital with franchisees, which is worth understanding in both directions.

For international buyers, GoTo Foods publishes something few brands do: an explicit list of unavailable markets, naming India, Saudi Arabia and South Korea among ten, alongside roughly forty-five markets of high interest. Publishing where you cannot go is more useful than only publishing where you can.

What we could not establish

The franchise term and renewal conditions. Not published on any GoTo Foods page we could load. Every lead traced back to directory sites we do not cite.

Any veteran or first-responder discount. No GoTo Foods page mentions one for Jamba, and the IFA’s veterans programme page carries no Jamba-specific figure. A widely repeated veteran-fee figure exists online, but we could not verify it from any source we would cite, so it is not here. Given that Smoothie King publishes both a veteran and a first-responder discount, this is worth asking directly rather than assuming.

Questions to ask before you rely on any figure

• How does the Franchise Agreement define net sales, and what exactly is deducted from gross receipts?
• What are the investment ranges for drive-thru, kiosk, non-traditional and in-line formats?
• What is the initial term, what renewal rights exist, and what does renewal cost?
• Why is the royalty 6 percent for Jamba and 7 percent for Auntie Anne’s, and can that change at renewal?
• If a co-branded location is proposed, what obligations beyond the marketing split apply to each brand?
• Is there a veteran or first-responder programme, since none is published?
• 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?