How Much Does a Beef Jerky Outlet Franchise Owner Make?

The official disclosure provides sales, not owner earnings, for franchised Beef Jerky Experience stores. For fiscal 2025, 62 franchised stores open at least one year averaged $430,063 in Gross Product Sales and had a median of $369,957. The FDD separately reports a 56% average Gross Margin for five affiliate stores, but those affiliate stores do not pay royalties. These are different populations and different metrics. (2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 51-56.)

Item 19 defines Gross Product Sales as revenue from jerky, merchandise and specialty goods. Gross Margin is that revenue measure less Gross Product Costs. Neither measure deducts payroll, rent, utilities, royalty, technology, depreciation, interest or other store-level expenses. The FTC's franchise buyer guide specifically warns that gross sales do not show whether an outlet is profitable after overhead.

The estimate is a Mode C FDD-anchored scenario for the current specialty-food store format, using fiscal 2025 disclosed revenue cohorts and an all-in operating-margin proxy. The base margin is 4.3%; conservative and upside margins are 3 percentage points below and above that benchmark. The margin spread is analytical, not franchisor-reported.

The IRS benchmark comes from the 2023 nonfarm sole-proprietorship income statement. For the broad Food and Beverage Stores category, business receipts were $36.374 billion and net income less deficit was $1.576 billion, producing a 4.3% all-in margin. A sole proprietor's net income generally includes compensation for the owner's own labor rather than a deductible owner salary, which makes it a closer proxy for owner-operator benefit than for passive business profit. The category is broader than the NAICS 445298 specialty-food-retailer definition, which is one reason confidence is limited.

The 56% affiliate Gross Margin is not combined with the tax benchmark because the two figures cover different populations and expense definitions. The current 6% royalty and 2% Brand and Technology Fee are not layered on as a separate deduction: the benchmark is already an all-in net-income measure, and its underlying “other business expenses” line does not isolate franchise fees. This avoids double charging, but it creates a material comparability risk if the broad industry population carries a lower fee burden than the franchised store.

• Conservative: $223,180 low-tier average sales at a 1.3% benefit margin.
• Base: $369,957 system median sales at a 4.3% benefit margin.
• Upside: $693,916 high-tier average sales at a 7.3% benefit margin.
• Included: the all-in margin reflects cost of sales, payroll, rent, utilities, advertising, interest, depreciation and other Schedule C deductions in the benchmark population.
• Fee treatment: the current 8% percentage-fee burden is disclosed and tested separately, not layered onto the all-in margin.
• Excluded: financing principal, personal income taxes and cash capital expenditures. Fixed POS and technology subscriptions are not added because the Item 6 table displays conflicting overlapping amounts that require written clarification.

Owner involvement is the largest difference between the two economic views. The FDD does not require full-time owner operation, but an owner who does not participate in daily operations must hire a designated Highly Trusted Individual to manage the store. The owner must still provide substantial and continuing effort. (2026 FDD, Item 15, pp. 42-43.)

The owner-operator estimate treats the owner as performing the store-supervisor role, so it combines residual business profit with the market value of that labor. For the manager-run view, the model deducts approximately $69,700 of employer compensation: the May 2025 national mean wage of $53,380 for First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers, increased by the March 2026 retail-trade benefit-to-wage ratio. Local compensation can be materially higher or lower.

The answer is estimated pre-tax economics, not personal take-home pay. The industry proxy is an all-in net-income margin that includes normal operating deductions, interest and depreciation. The current 6% royalty and 2% Brand and Technology Fee are disclosed as material comparability factors but are not deducted again because the benchmark does not isolate franchise fees. Financing principal, personal income taxes and annual cash capital expenditures remain outside the estimate.

Gross Product Sales

FDD revenue from jerky, merchandise and specialty goods. It is not owner earnings.

Gross Margin

Gross Product Sales less Gross Product Costs. The 56% figure is from five affiliate stores, not franchised-store net income.

Owner-operator benefit

Estimated residual economics plus the labor value of the owner performing the management role.

Manager-run residual

Estimated owner-operator benefit less a modeled store-manager wage and employer benefit load.

The evidence confidence is LIMITED because the current disclosure does not report franchised-store profit or owner compensation. Same-brand sales coverage is broad, but the expense margin depends materially on a broad sole-proprietor category; the 56% same-brand Gross Margin is available only for five company-affiliated outlets and is used as context rather than merged into the estimate.

Item 20 adds another uncertainty signal: franchised outlets declined from 75 at the start of 2025 to 63 at year-end, a net change of negative 12. That movement does not prove why any individual outlet closed or transferred, but it makes current-franchisee interviews and store-level records especially important. (2026 FDD, Item 20, pp. 56-63.)

The sales population also mixes operating variants: Item 19 says the tables apply to traditional stores and convenience-store locations at fueling stations, and four Flex/Seasonal franchises are included in the 2025 results. No Pop-Up stores were operating for at least one year, and no Peanut Butter Shoppe performance is included. A buyer should not assume one pooled sales figure applies equally to every format.

A buyer should verify the missing store-level expenses and owner-role facts in writing before treating any scenario as a budget. The franchisor's official franchise process page states that prospects receive the current FDD and are encouraged to speak with current owners; those discussions should focus on reconciled financial records rather than verbal earnings claims.

• Request Item 19 written substantiation and ask how the 62-store population reconciles to Item 20 outlet counts, ages and formats.
• Ask several current and former franchisees for 2025 profit-and-loss statements showing product cost, payroll, occupancy, royalty, technology, merchant fees, shrink and owner compensation.
• Confirm the current fixed POS, technology, loyalty, bookkeeping and support fees because the Item 6 table contains overlapping figures that are not reproducible as printed.
• Separate owner hours and salary from distributions. Determine whether reported “income” includes compensation for working as store manager.
• Model the actual lease, local wages, benefit burden, debt interest, principal payments and replacement capital for the proposed location; do not calculate personal taxes from a system average.