How Much Does an APlus Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 reports no APlus outlet sales or earnings data. The 2026 disclosure says Sunoco Retail LLC does not make representations about a franchisee’s future financial performance or the past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets. Therefore, no official APlus average unit volume, median sales, gross profit, operating profit, EBITDA, net income, cash flow, owner salary, or owner distributions can be published from the FDD.

Item 20 provides system structure rather than economics. At December 31, 2025, the APLUS system had 247 franchised outlets and 19 company-operated outlets, for 266 total outlets. During 2025, two franchised outlets opened, one terminated, and seven transferred to new owners. Those counts help identify the operating population, but they do not reveal sales, profit, closure losses, purchase prices, or owner compensation. Source: 2026 APLUS Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, p. 64, and Item 20, pp. 64–67.

The Federal Trade Commission’s guide to buying a franchise explains that franchisor claims about sales, income, or profit should appear in Item 19. A buyer should not treat an oral projection, broker estimate, or generic convenience-store margin as an APlus financial performance representation.

The range uses a full-year in-store revenue benchmark, a broad official retail net-income margin, and a separate value for the owner’s required labor. It is estimated, not reported by Sunoco Retail LLC, and applies only to a standard non-leased APlus Store under the stated assumptions.

• Central revenue anchor — $2,245,106. NACS reported $341.2 billion of U.S. convenience-store in-store sales for 2025 and 151,975 stores. Dividing those values produces a $2.25 million arithmetic average. It is an industry benchmark, not APlus Gross Sales. The model applies an explicit 80%, 100%, and 120% spread: $1.80 million, $2.25 million, and $2.69 million.
• Central margin anchor — 2.514%. IRS Statistics of Income reported $896.557 billion of business receipts and $22.542 billion of net income less deficit for 2022 Food and beverage retailers. The model applies the permitted analytical sensitivity of minus three, zero, and plus three percentage points: approximately -0.5%, 2.5%, and 5.5%.
• Owner labor value — $44,370. The BLS 2025 mean annual wage for first-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers in gasoline stations is used as a market-value proxy for the owner’s operating work. It is not an APlus salary and is not passive profit.
• Rounding. Calculations use full-precision inputs and are rounded to the nearest $1,000 for publication. The scenario labels are analytical cases, not probabilities or franchisor-reported performance bands.

The IRS metric is net income less deficit, not EBITDA, store-level operating profit, seller’s discretionary earnings, or cash flow. Corporate deductions include interest and depreciation, and may include officer compensation. Financing principal payments and personal income taxes are not calculated. Because the source is an aggregate tax-return dataset rather than an APlus unit cohort, the resulting figures carry limited confidence.

APlus is not modeled here as a passive, manager-run single-unit franchise because the FDD requires substantial owner involvement. For one Leased or Non-Leased APLUS Store, Item 15 requires the franchisee or Designated Manager to be present at least 40 hours per week, including specified weekday hours. A sole proprietor must be the Designated Manager; for an approved entity, that manager generally must own 51% of the voting interest unless Sunoco Retail LLC agrees otherwise.

Source for participation requirements: 2026 APLUS Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 15, pp. 51–52. Source for labor value: the BLS 2025 mean wage for first-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers in gasoline stations. The BLS occupation is a proxy; the owner’s actual time, skill, payroll treatment, and responsibilities may differ.

At the scenario revenue levels, a standard non-leased store’s illustrative royalty, current marketing fee, and midpoint technology and EPOS charges total about $91,000 to $127,000 annually. This is an FDD-based fee-burden check, not a second deduction from the earnings scenarios.

For a standard non-leased APLUS Store, Item 6 states a royalty of up to 4% of Gross Sales with a $1,000 monthly minimum, a marketing fee up to $1,500 or 2% of Gross Sales—whichever is less—and currently $750 monthly, a $330 to $600 monthly Technology Fee, and $125 to $600 monthly EPOS/data-transmission equipment rent. The FDD’s Gross Sales definition excludes gasoline and diesel sales, among other specified items, so the royalty base is not the same as total site revenue.

The published range does not apply to leased, captive-market, fuel-only, newly opening, or multi-unit portfolios. Those formats have materially different rent, royalty, development, operating, or reporting structures, and the FDD provides no sales distribution that would support combining them.

• Leased APLUS Store. The standard royalty is 6% of Gross Sales with a $2,000 monthly minimum, and disclosed monthly rent ranges from $5,000 to $34,000. Site-specific rent alone can change annual economics by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Captive Market. The royalty can be up to 15% of Gross Sales. Captive-market rent can range from $5,300 to $86,000 monthly, and concessionaire or transportation-authority requirements may add costs. A single standard-store scenario would not be compatible.
• Gasoline operation. Fuel is optional, may involve a separate SUNOCO fueling-station agreement, and gasoline and diesel sales are excluded from the APLUS Gross Sales definition used for royalty calculations. Fuel gallons, cents-per-gallon margin, card fees, environmental costs, and supply terms require a separate model.
• New or converted location. The NACS revenue anchor is an industry-wide full-year average and does not represent ramp-up. A new store may operate below the central revenue benchmark while customer traffic, staffing, inventory, and foodservice mature.
• Multi-unit development. The FDD’s minimum development commitment is four stores. Per-unit earnings cannot simply be multiplied by four because openings, management layers, shared overhead, working capital, and unit maturity differ.

Format definitions and obligations are from the 2026 APLUS Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 1, pp. 3–5; Item 6, pp. 9–22; and Item 15, pp. 51–52. The official APlus franchise program page describes the brand as a convenience-store backcourt program that may be used with different fuel brands, while the official APlus consumer site shows the mix of food, beverages, groceries, snacks, and fuel found across the brand.

The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand store-level sales and expense data. The modeled range is most sensitive to local in-store sales, merchandise gross margin, payroll, rent or occupancy, card fees, shrink, and whether the owner’s labor replaces payroll that would otherwise be required.

• Revenue comparability. The $2.25 million anchor is an arithmetic average across the U.S. convenience-store industry. It is not a median, excludes fuel sales, and does not identify store size, geography, ownership model, maturity, or APlus participation.
• Margin comparability. The IRS Food and beverage retailers category includes businesses unlike an APLUS convenience store. Its 2.5% aggregate net-income margin weights larger corporations by receipts and does not show a typical single-location outcome.
• Accounting definition. IRS net income is after reported deductions such as interest and depreciation; it is not EBITDA or distributable cash. Officer compensation may already be embedded, creating possible overlap with the separate labor-value analysis.
• Fee and occupancy variance. The exact royalty may be negotiated within the disclosed range, while rent, technology, EPOS, supplier terms, insurance, utilities, credit-card expense, and local wage rates vary by site.
• Owner compensation method. Salary, draw, distributions, retained earnings, and business profit are different. The model does not prescribe how an owner should pay themselves or calculate personal taxes.
• Debt service and capital needs. Financing principal, acquisition debt, replacement equipment, remodels, inventory growth, and major repairs are excluded from the owner-benefit range. Interest and depreciation are embedded only indirectly through the broad IRS margin proxy.

The NACS benchmark is useful because it reports in-store foodservice and merchandise sales separately from total fuel-inclusive industry sales. Its 2025 data show $341.2 billion of in-store sales across 151,975 U.S. convenience stores, but NACS does not present those figures as APlus performance. See the NACS 2025 convenience-store performance release and the NACS U.S. convenience-store count methodology and totals.

A buyer should replace every industry assumption with location-specific written evidence before underwriting an APlus acquisition or new store. Item 19 provides no same-brand benchmark, so existing-franchisee interviews and verifiable store records carry unusual importance.

• Confirm the current Item 19 position. Ask whether Sunoco Retail LLC has issued an amendment or written supplemental financial performance representation after April 28, 2026, and request the written substantiation for any figure presented.
• Obtain at least 24 months of store records. Review point-of-sale reports, tax returns, bank deposits, merchandise-category sales, cost of goods, labor, shrink, card fees, utilities, repairs, insurance, and occupancy.
• Separate the businesses. Reconcile APLUS Gross Sales, excluded fuel sales, lottery commissions, ATM or money-order activity, foodservice, car wash, and any concurrent operation. Do not blend fuel revenue with inside-store margin without a separate bridge.
• Price the exact contract. Confirm the store’s royalty percentage, minimum royalty, marketing fee, rent, technology fee, EPOS charge, supplier requirements, local advertising, and any captive-market or concession obligations.
• Test owner labor honestly. Document the owner’s required weekly hours, duties, backup coverage, trained employee requirements, and payroll that remains necessary even when the owner is present.
• Interview current and former franchisees. Ask about full-year sales, merchandise gross margin, payroll, shrink, rent resets, equipment failures, remodel requirements, cash retained for working capital, and reasons for transfers or exits.
• Model financing separately. Show interest, principal, lender reserves, and covenant requirements apart from operating earnings. Do not convert this pre-tax range into personal after-tax income.
• Reconcile every definition. Make sure Gross Sales, net income, owner salary, distributions, depreciation, interest, and capital expenditures are not silently treated as the same measure.

The strongest defensible screening range is approximately $36,000 to $193,000 of annual owner-operator benefit for a full-year standard non-leased APlus Store, with a base scenario near $101,000. It is scenario-based, not official. Within that benefit, the modeled residual business result is approximately -$9,000 to $149,000 and the remaining $44,370 represents the market value of labor performed by the actively involved owner.

The most important driver is the combination of in-store sales and net margin; a small margin change on more than $2 million of revenue can move annual profit sharply. The largest unresolved uncertainty is that the 2026 APLUS FDD provides no Item 19 store-level sales or profit disclosure and no compatible APlus expense cohort. Before making a decision, a buyer should verify the current Item 19 and any substantiation, obtain location-level records, reconcile APLUS Gross Sales to fuel and other excluded revenue, and compare the scenario assumptions with current and former franchisee interviews.