Find a Franchise Resale: The FDD Is Free and Public

Most advice about finding a franchise resale is a list of websites. This page starts somewhere better: with the document the government already made public, and the phone numbers inside it.

We are an independent publisher, not a broker and not a law firm. Everything below is a description of what public records contain and where they sit.

The disclosure document is a public record in some states

A franchisor selling in a registration state files its disclosure document with that state. Several states then publish what they receive.

Minnesota is the most useful of these to a buyer. The Department of Commerce describes its Commerce Actions and Regulatory Documents Search, CARDS, as containing “franchise registration information and documents from the last 10 years,” and states the point that matters in six words: “These documents are public and may be copied.”

That is worth sitting with. The document a franchise salesperson delivers on their own timetable, with your name on a receipt, is sitting on a state website for anyone to download.

Checked on 2026-08-03, a search of CARDS for McDonald’s returned 339 records spanning 2011 to 2026, with a document-type filter offering options including Clean FDD, Marked FDD and Final FDD. One of them, a 2024 Clean FDD, downloaded as a complete 368-page disclosure document with all 23 numbered Items, at no cost and with no account, payment or personal details requested at any point. Note that Minnesota’s own page describes the holding as the last 10 years while the results reached back further than that, so treat 10 years as a floor rather than a limit.

Wisconsin’s Department of Financial Institutions runs a second one, and it is at least as useful. Its franchise search returns a brand’s registration status and filing history, and each filing’s detail page carries a Franchise Disclosure Document section with the upload date and a download button.

Checked on 2026-08-03, the McDonald’s USA, LLC record (filing number 640986) showed status Registered, a registration effective 4/15/2026, an amendment effective 7/1/2026, and a disclosure document file uploaded on 07/01/2026. It also lists States Application Filed, which for that record read Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island and South Dakota.

A practical note on searching: registries index the legal entity, not the brand you know. McDonald’s files as McDonald’s USA, LLC. If a brand name returns nothing, find the franchisor’s legal name first and search on that.

Item 20 is a directory of people who have already done this

Once you have the document, the section that matters most for finding a resale is not the fee tables. It is Item 20, together with the exhibits it points to.

That distinction is worth making before you go looking. Item 20 itself carries the outlet-count tables. The actual named lists, with addresses and telephone numbers, are usually attached as exhibits at the back of the document, and Item 20 tells you which ones. In the 2024 McDonald’s disclosure document retrieved from CARDS for this article, Item 20 says a list of franchised restaurants is “attached to this disclosure document as Exhibit R,” and the list of franchisees who left is Exhibit S. Those exhibits sat around page 357 of 368. If you read Item 20 and stop there, you will conclude the names are not in the document.

Current franchisees, with phone numbers. 16 CFR 436.5(t)(4) requires the franchisor to “disclose the names of all current franchisees and the address and telephone number of each of their outlets.” There is an alternative that lets a franchisor list only the outlets in your state, but it comes with a floor: if those total fewer than 100, it must “disclose this information for franchised outlets from contiguous states and then the next closest states until at least 100 franchised outlets are listed.”

Read that floor carefully, because it is conditional. It applies only where the franchisor takes the state-level alternative and the system has 100 or more outlets nationwide. A brand with forty units cannot produce a hundred names; its franchisor must instead disclose all of its current franchisees, however many that is. Either way you get a list of real operators, and none of them is being paid to recruit you.

Franchisees who have left, also with phone numbers. This is the list almost nobody reads. Under 16 CFR 436.5(t)(5) the franchisor must disclose:

“the name, city and state, and current business telephone number, or if unknown, the last known home telephone number of every franchisee who had an outlet terminated, canceled, not renewed, or otherwise voluntarily or involuntarily ceased to do business under the franchise agreement during the most recently completed fiscal year or who has not communicated with the franchisor within 10 weeks of the disclosure document issuance date.”

Read the last clause again. A franchisee who has simply stopped talking to the franchisor for ten weeks lands on the departures list alongside those who were terminated. That is a disclosure requirement doing something useful: it makes silence visible.

The same paragraph requires the document to warn franchisees that this will happen to them, in words the rule specifies: “If you buy this franchise, your contact information may be disclosed to other buyers when you leave the franchise system.”

The franchisor may show you that unit’s actual numbers

This one surprises people, and it is written into the rule.

Item 19 is where a franchisor makes financial performance representations, and it is the item most franchisors approach cautiously. But 16 CFR 436.5(s)(4) carves out the resale case:

“If a franchisor wishes to disclose only the actual operating results for a specific outlet being offered for sale, it need not comply with this section, provided the information is given only to potential purchasers of that outlet.”

In other words, the usual Item 19 machinery does not stand in the way of a franchisor handing a prospective buyer the real trading records of the specific unit for sale. Asking for them is an ordinary request. A refusal is information too, and so is a set of records that will not reconcile to a tax return.

This site does not value businesses or estimate what any unit is worth, and what those records mean is work for an accountant. What the rule establishes is that the records can be provided.

Where the franchisor sits in your transaction

There is a reason to talk to the franchisor early beyond politeness. Whether you are owed a disclosure document at all depends on how involved it is in the sale: 16 CFR 436.1(t) takes a transfer outside the Rule’s definition of a franchise sale only “where the franchisor has had no significant involvement with the prospective transferee,” and adds that approval or disapproval alone is not significant involvement.

Three of the four transfer provisions we have read on this site require the buyer to sign the franchisor’s current agreement, qualify against its criteria and pay it a fee, which means the franchisor is often not a bystander. Check what your own brand’s Item 17 requires, establish what the franchisor is actually doing in your deal, and ask it directly whether it will be providing disclosure.

Marketplaces and brokers, in proportion

Business-for-sale marketplaces do carry franchised units, and a broker may know about a unit before it is listed anywhere. Neither is a bad place to look.

What they are not is a substitute for the document. A listing describes a business the way a seller wants it described. Item 20 describes the system the way a federal rule required it to be described, including the parts nobody would volunteer. Start with the second and use the first to find specific opportunities.

Two things worth knowing about intermediaries. A franchise broker is generally engaged in selling new franchises on behalf of franchisors, which is a different job from selling an existing unit for its owner. And a broker’s compensation shapes what gets shown to you. Ask who pays the person you are talking to, and what for. That question has never offended anyone worth dealing with.

Questions to ask before you contact a seller

• Is this brand’s disclosure document available from a state registry, and have I read it?
• What does Item 20 show about transfers, terminations and non-renewals at this brand?
• Which current franchisees near this unit can I call, from the Item 20 list?
• Which franchisees left the system last year, and will any of them talk to me?
• Will the franchisor provide the actual operating results for this specific outlet?
• What role is the franchisor playing in this sale, and does that mean it owes me disclosure?
• Who pays the broker or intermediary involved, and on what terms?
• Will a franchise attorney and an accountant review what I collect before I make an offer?