Robeks Franchise Cost: A Net-Sales Royalty It Won't Define

Robeks charges a royalty on net sales rather than gross, and it will not tell you what net sales means. That second half is the problem, because the word only changes the price if you know what it excludes.

The basis matters as much as the number

Robeks’ FAQ states it plainly: 7 percent of the net sales of your first restaurant, falling to 6.5 percent on a second and 6 percent from the third onward.

Two things there are unusual. The first is the tiering. Almost every brand covered here charges one flat rate regardless of how many units you run, and Robeks instead reduces the rate permanently as you add locations. That is an incentive to grow rather than a barrier to entry, and a meaningfully different posture from brands that simply refuse single-unit buyers.

A royalty that looks flat often is not, and the brands covered here vary theirs on three different axes. Robeks varies by unit count, permanently. Del Taco varies by time, running the opposite way: three-plus-unit developers start at 1 percent and ramp to the standard 5 percent over four years, so the discount expires. Caribou varies by venue, charging 6 percent at a standard kiosk but 4 percent inside airports, universities and hospitals.

Only Robeks’ reduction is both permanent and keyed to how many restaurants you run. When you see a single royalty percentage quoted for any brand, the useful question is which of those three axes it is a point on.

The second is the basis, and it is the more important of the two.

What we could not establish, and will not guess

How Robeks defines net sales. This is the central gap on this page. Net sales is conventionally gross receipts less certain items, and sales taxes and customer refunds are almost always among them, but the specific deduction list varies by agreement and Robeks’ is not public. We are not going to describe its definition, because we have not read it.

That matters practically. If the deductions are narrow, 7 percent of net is close to 7 percent of gross and sits above Smoothie King’s 6 percent and Playa Bowls’ 6 percent. If they are broad, the effective rate could land below both. The published figure alone does not tell you which.

Any marketing or advertising fee. We checked ten Robeks franchising pages and no national, regional or local advertising fee appears on any of them. This is not a claim that none exists. Marketing fees typically add anywhere from 1 to 6 percentage points on top of a royalty at brands in this category, so an unstated one is a material unknown rather than a happy absence.

The term and renewal conditions. Also unpublished. A dated third-party directory lists a 10-year term, but its liquid-capital and net-worth figures for Robeks are stale relative to Robeks’ current site, so we are not repeating its term figure either.

Which FDD the published figures come from. Neither the FAQ nor the investment page says. Given that a brand in a neighbouring category is showing figures from a 2023 document on a live 2026 page, that question is worth asking directly.

Robeks does not host its Franchise Disclosure Document publicly, which is the ordinary case rather than a criticism. It does mean that everything above stays open until you request one. Our FDD walkthrough covers what to pull from it, and our Item 6 guide covers the fee table specifically.

The FICO requirement is worth knowing early

A minimum FICO score of 720, stated on two of its own pages.

Only one other brand covered here publishes a credit-score floor: Wayback Burgers asks for 700 or above. Most brands publish liquid capital and net worth and leave creditworthiness to be discovered during underwriting. Robeks puts a checkable number up front, and its bar is the higher of the two.

That is genuinely useful, because it is the cheapest piece of diligence available. You can check your own score for free, today, before contacting anyone or spending anything. If it is materially below 720, that is worth resolving first rather than discovering it late in an application.

Cost, qualification and scale

Franchise fee $30,000. Single-restaurant total investment $298,050 to $511,500.

The published qualification ladder is unusually explicit:

Commitment	Liquid capital	Net worth
Single restaurant	$125,000	$325,000
Three restaurants	$250,000	$1,000,000

Publishing tiers this way is helpful, and note what it tells you: the single-restaurant tier really is the entry point. Robeks’ own wording is that a franchise owner has the opportunity to initially develop one restaurant for the $30,000 fee, with multi-unit presented as an option. That is the reverse of Tropical Smoothie’s three-cafe minimum in most markets.

Territories appear open and it is actively recruiting, with no closed-market list published. One thing you may encounter: a third-party franchise directory shows Robeks as not accepting applicants through that directory, which is a platform status rather than a statement from Robeks, whose own application page is live.

On scale, its homepage advertises 140 locations open and in development across 13 states. Read that carefully, because “open and in development” is a combined figure and not a count of trading restaurants. It also publishes no franchised-versus-company-owned split, which is FDD Item 20 and one of the more informative tables in the document.

How it compares in its category

Robeks and Playa Bowls are the two salad and bowl brands covered here with the clearest single-unit route, and Robeks is the only one publishing a credit-score floor. Its net-sales basis is the thing that makes a straight cost ranking unreliable. Our category side-by-side sets the five out together.

Questions to ask before you rely on any figure

• How does the Franchise Agreement define net sales, and exactly what is deducted from gross receipts?
• What advertising or marketing fees apply, at what rate, and on which basis?
• What is the initial term, what renewal rights exist, and what does renewal cost?
• Which FDD do the published investment figures come from?
• Of the 140 locations open and in development, how many are actually open and trading?
• What does Item 20 show for openings, closures and transfers over the last three years?
• Does the tiered royalty apply automatically on opening a second unit, or does it require anything of you?
• Will a franchise attorney and an accountant review the full FDD with me before I commit?