How Long Does It Take to Open a Franchise? Item 11 Data From 259 FDDs

How long does it take to open a franchise? The sector index

The median franchisor in this sample expects a new unit to open 5.9 to 9 months after the franchise agreement is signed. The spread by sector is wide: lodging 18 to 24 months at one end and business services 1 to 3 months at the other. The figures are the franchisors’ own estimates, disclosed in Item 11 of the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) under 16 CFR 436.5(k)(2), not measured opening dates.

The index below reads each brand’s Item 11 sentence on the “typical length of time” between signing (or first payment) and opening. Days and weeks were converted to months (30.44 days and 4.35 weeks per month). The median low and high columns use the 223 brands that give both ends or a single value; 24 brands give only an upper bound (“within 90 days”) and appear in the upper-end statistics elsewhere in this report. Sort any column. Brand-level data are in the download at the end.

Costs for the same brands are in our franchise initial investment study; the steps around signing are described in our guide to buying a franchise.

Most franchisors expect to open within a year

80.2% of the brands that give an upper end put it at 12 months or less, and 43.3% at six months or less. The median upper end is 9 months (middle half 4 to 12). The cluster at the 9-to-12-month band reflects how often brands with storefronts write “six to twelve months” or a single “twelve months”.

The longest upper end in the sample is 42 months, for a newly built hotel. At the short end, a few brands disclose a lower end of zero or one day, for cases where an approved location or an operating business is already in place at signing. The median range is 3 months wide, which is a reminder that a single brand’s estimate covers very different starting positions.

Real estate and build-out drive the difference

Whether a franchise needs premises explains more of the spread than the sector label does. Joining each brand to its Item 7 premises type from our initial investment dataset gives a median upper end of 3 months for home-based or mobile brands (47 brands), 11.8 months for leased premises (173 brands) and 24 months where a new building is put up (14 brands).

The same pattern holds on a continuous measure. The share of the high-end Item 7 investment that goes to real estate and build-out has a Spearman rank correlation of 0.74 with the typical upper end (247 brands). Split into thirds by that share, the median upper end rises from 3 to 10 to 12 months. The 21 brands with no real estate or build-out line at all estimate a median 2 months. This is a correlation between two franchisor disclosures, not proof that build-out causes the delay; larger total investments show a similar rank correlation (0.72).

Is there a deadline to open a franchise?

Usually yes. 227 of the 259 brands (87.6%) set a numeric opening deadline in Item 11 or the franchise agreement, a further 16 use a date written into the agreement or a formula instead of a number, and 16 have no opening deadline that we could find. For the 204 deadlines counted from signing, the median is 11.8 months (middle half 5.9 to 12 months) and 12 months is the most common value (60 brands). The other 23 numeric deadlines run from site approval, construction or training milestones.

The consequence is spelled out in most documents: in 92.3% of FDDs the franchisor may terminate if the unit is not open on time, often without refunding the initial fee. Extension routes vary. The most common is franchisor discretion (94 brands); 31 brands state an extension fee amount (median $5,000); 50 offer only the general force majeure clause, which covers events outside the franchisee’s control rather than ordinary slow progress. Item 17 of the same documents summarizes termination rights; our franchise agreement terms study covers them in detail.

The typical time and the deadline are often the same number

The brief for this report expected agreements to set a deadline a little beyond the typical time. The data show something tighter. For the 185 brands whose typical time and deadline both run from signing or payment, the deadline equals the top of the typical range in 108 cases (58.4%) and is shorter than it in 16 (8.6%). The median cushion is 0 months; only 2.2% of brands leave more than six months between the end of their typical range and their deadline.

In practice this means a buyer whose opening runs to the slow end of the franchisor’s own estimate is already at, or past, the contractual limit in 67% of these brands. Extensions are common on paper but mostly discretionary. A zero cushion can also mean the franchisor simply set its estimate equal to its deadline, so the typical time is not independent evidence of how long openings take.

What delays a franchise opening

Item 11 must also list the factors that can stretch the timeline. Among the 248 brands that state a typical time, financing is named most often (67.7%), ahead of permits (62.5%), equipment delivery or installation (59.7%) and construction or build-out (57.7%). Finding a site is listed by 50.4%, and state or professional licensing by 47.2%.

Site rules add their own clocks. The franchisee picks the site, subject to approval, in 219 brands; 35 have no site to pick. Where a limit is stated, franchisors take a median 30 days to approve or reject a site (161 brands), and 151 brands give the buyer a median 3.9 months from signing to secure one.

How long is franchise training?

Every Item 11 must include a TRAINING PROGRAM table with classroom and on-the-job hours by subject (16 CFR 436.5(k)(7)). Across 252 brands with usable hours, the median initial program is 75 hours (middle half 38.5 to 120). 30.6% of brands need 40 hours or fewer, roughly one working week; 10.3% need more than 160.

Timing matters as much as length. 90.3% of brands require the initial program to be completed before opening, many of them a set number of days before; 16 allow part of it after. 77.2% deliver at least part online or by video. Lodging is the exception: hotel training tables are split by job role, and only 38.9% of lodging brands require initial training to be finished before opening, so lodging hours are not comparable with other sectors.

Outside benchmarks for the opening timeline

No public dataset records actual franchise opening dates, so the FDD estimates cannot be checked against outcomes. A few public sources put bounds on individual steps.

• Before signing: the FDD must be delivered at least 14 calendar days before the buyer signs or pays (16 CFR 436.2(a); FTC consumer guide).
• Financing: the SBA lists its own turnaround as 5 to 10 business days for standard 7(a) loans and 2 to 10 for 7(a) small loans (SBA); lender underwriting and closing add time. Brand eligibility is checked against the SBA Franchise Directory. Our SBA franchise loans study covers the loan data.
• Food permits (Minnesota example): plans must reach the regulator at least 30 days before construction, and the regulator reports within 30 days of complete plans (Minn. R. 4626.1720).
• Senior care licensing (Minnesota example): once a home care application is complete, the health department has 60 days to issue or deny a temporary license (MDH).
• All new employers: applications filed in 2021 that became employers within two years took an average 2.29 quarters to first payroll, and 2.32 quarters in accommodation and food services (Census Business Formation Statistics). That series covers every new business, not franchises, and starts at a tax-ID application rather than a franchise signing.

Signed but not yet open

Item 11 states what a franchisor expects for one unit. Item 20 of the same FDDs counts franchise agreements signed but not yet opened across a whole system, which shows how many buyers are inside that window at once. That count is analyzed in our same-day franchise development backlog report. For costs incurred while waiting to open, see franchise costs.

Where the data stop

The sample is 259 brands whose FDDs are on file in Minnesota, capped at 18 per sector (27 for food), so it over-represents small sectors and leaves out brands that do not register there. Each figure is what the franchisor discloses: a typical estimate and a contract deadline, not how long real openings took. Brands with several formats were coded on the standard format presented first. Hotel deadlines that run from construction milestones, and deadlines tied to site approval or training, are kept in the dataset but left out of the cushion comparison.

A hand-check of 20 random brands, read independently from the full FDD text, found 1 reader error in 231 scored fields (0.4%) and 5 fields (2.2%) where the document allowed two readings.