Trust & methods

How the Factbook works

Everything on this site is built to be checked. This page explains where our data comes from, how the Factbook Score is computed, how reviews will be verified, and what we do when we get something wrong.

Formula version: score_v1

Where the facts come from

Every US franchisor must publish a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) under the FTC Franchise Rule — a regulated filing that discloses fees (Items 5–6), full startup costs (Item 7), litigation and bankruptcy history (Items 3–4), financial performance representations if any (Item 19), and outlet-by-outlet openings, closures and transfers (Item 20). We collect these documents from public state registries and directly from franchisors, and extract the facts with a combination of automated parsing and human review.

Three commitments follow from that. First, facts are presented verbatim: numbers on brand pages come from the filing, with a link to the source document. Second, absence is disclosed: if a brand shares no earnings data, we say so — that's information, not a gap. Third, every fact is traceable to its source.

How fresh is the data?

As of today we cover 50 brands, of which 10are built from complete current FDDs. This number updates automatically as coverage grows — we don't hand-edit it.

The Factbook Score

The Factbook Score (0–100) summarizes system health using only objective, filed data. It is computed — never assigned, never edited, never sold. The current formula, score_v1, blends four components as percentiles within a brand's category:

Component	Weight	Input
Owner retention	40%	Inverse of the 3-year average turnover rate, from Item 20
Unit growth	30%	3-year net franchised-unit growth rate, capped
Disclosure quality	20%	Whether the brand discloses earnings (Item 19) and its depth
System maturity	10%	Years franchising (log-scaled)

Rules that never bend:a brand with under 3 years of Item 20 history shows "Score pending — insufficient history," never a low score for missing data. A category shows "Score pending — insufficient peers" until it has 3+ brands with complete 3-year history, because a percentile computed against fewer peers is statistically meaningless — not because we're hiding a bad score. There are no manual overrides — not for sponsors, not for anyone.

How owner reviews will be verified

This is not live yet. When it launches, only verified current and former franchise owners will be able to review a brand. Verification will work by matching the reviewer against the brand's own franchisee roster (published in FDD Item 20 exhibits), or against a supporting document we view for verification and do not retain. Reviews will publish anonymously once a brand has at least 5 verified reviewers, and an aggregate score will appear at 20+.

What we don't do

We don't sell rankings or scores. We don't resell contact information to brokers or lead networks. We don't accept payment to remove, soften, or delay facts, reviews, or changelog entries. We are not owned by any broker network, franchisor, or lead-generation company — see our sponsorship policy for how we make money.

Corrections

If we've published an error, we want it dead fast. We re-check against the source filing and correct within 5 business days, logging the fix in the profile changelog.