A Case Study in Franchise Diligence - Crumbl Cookies (Part I)

"How much money will I make?"

Pretty normal question to kick off any research or diligence when looking at a franchise system.

You scroll down to Item 19 in a ~300 page PDF document (an FDD) to see what kind of details are present.

Lets walk through Crumbl's latest 2026 FDD as an example, because it highlights the nuance and difficulty just to obtain basic revenue and profit projections...

We see four gross sales revenue figures disclosed...

.. Low Store: $365K
.. High Store: $3.42M
.. Median Store: $1.09M
.. Average Store: $1.14M

"One store did more revenue in a month and a half than another did all year? Is that normal?"

"Are these numbers good?"

"What are all of the expenses associated with running a store?"

These are great questions, and they cannot be solved alone by looking at Crumbl's 2026 FDD.

We only have four revenue numbers disclosed. No expense breakdown. No profitability outline.

"Okay so where do I find this expense and profit information and start to piece these details together?"

Crumbl states in their FDD:

'You should conduct an independent investigation of the costs and expenses you will incur in operating your franchised business. Franchisees or former franchisees, listed in this disclosure document, may be one source of this information.'

"But wait, Crumbl's FDD also highlights confidentiality clauses?"

Correct.

'During the last three fiscal years, franchisees have signed confidentiality clauses that restrict them from discussing with you their experiences as a franchisee in our franchise system.' (pdf pg 79)

"Okay, maybe we can get a quick sense for if these revenue numbers are increasing or decreasing over time?"

That's a great idea, but that data is not disclosed in the 2026 FDD alone. This requires extraction and reconstruction from three separate ~300 page PDFs.

"So I have to download and extract top line revenue figures across three years worth of documents to have a basic YoY revenue matrix?"

Correct.

You can start to get a sense for why research - and *especially diligence* can be a difficult process.

It is imperative to download and review multiple years' worth of FDDs and data to have a full picture of trend analysis.

All of this is where Franchise Signal comes into play. Franchise Signal ingests, structures, and presents this information in a variety of formats to facilitate diligence. Take this a step further and you can query and analyze all of this data right in your AI workspace with our MCP connector.

*By no means* is it a replacement for many other steps in your diligence process - but it is a start.

"But wait, I just downloaded the 2026 FDD for Crumbl and see that only 74% of fully operational stores had revenue included in the data we are looking at?"

This article is Part 1 of a 5 part Series in a case study on Franchise Diligence. For the full company profile and summary please see this report.

To see Part 2, click here.