How Much Does a Benjamin Franklin Plumbing Franchise Owner Make?

A defensible scenario range is approximately $8,000 to $70,000 in annual manager-run, pre-tax owner earnings per mature full-year Territory, with a base scenario near $29,000. These are estimated residual earnings, not official Benjamin Franklin Plumbing results. The range applies to the Item 19 full-year Territory format and uses lower-middle, central, and upper-middle revenue observations rather than the system’s most extreme reported Territories.

For this analysis, manager-run owner earnings means estimated Net Income after ordinary operating deductions, including a normal management-labor burden, interest, and depreciation as embedded in the IRS corporate benchmark; it is before personal income taxes and before financing principal payments. It is therefore not EBITDA, free cash flow, a salary, or after-tax take-home pay.

Item 19 reports Gross Revenue, not owner earnings. The 2025 full-year analysis covers 86 franchisees and 373 Territories. The average Gross Revenue per Territory was $656,635 and the median was $610,560. The average Gross Revenue per franchisee was $2,847,962, but that per-franchisee figure includes operators with multiple Territories and should not be read as single-unit revenue or personal income.

Gross Revenue is broadly defined as revenue and other income related to the Franchised Business, less bona fide customer refunds. It is not reduced for referral commissions and can include sales generated in an “open” Territory. Item 19 does not provide technician labor, materials, vehicle, insurance, rent, call-center, ServiceTitan, royalty, marketing, interest, depreciation, owner salary, or tax data sufficient to calculate a same-brand profit figure.

Which outlets are excluded from the headline revenue data?

The full-year cohort excludes important startup and exit experiences. Item 19 excludes 19 new franchisees representing 70 Territories that opened during 2025, 11 franchisees representing 25 Territories that ceased operations during 2025, and two franchisees representing two Territories that did not report revenue. Two of the closed outlets had operated for less than 12 months.

That exclusion improves period comparability, but it also means the median does not represent a brand-new Territory’s first year or every operator that entered or exited the system. Item 20 separately reports 399 franchised Territories and 10 company-owned Territories at December 31, 2025, with a net increase of 46 franchised Territories during the year. The FDD therefore supports a mature full-year revenue analysis, not a startup-year earnings promise.

The calculation multiplies three FDD revenue anchors by a government-industry Net Income margin sensitivity. The base margin is derived from IRS 2022 active-corporation data for Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors: $10.931 billion of aggregate Net Income divided by $229.970 billion of aggregate total receipts, or 4.753%. The IRS table represents an estimated 85,508 corporate returns.

The IRS benchmark is available through the IRS Corporation Income Tax Returns Complete Report. The industry classification is NAICS 238220, Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors, which includes installation, service, maintenance, repair, and new work. Benjamin Franklin Plumbing is narrower because its FDD focuses on residential and light commercial plumbing services and excludes industrial and new construction services.

• Revenue anchors are official. $473,799 is the third-quartile median, $610,560 is the overall Territory median, and $897,737 is the second-quartile median in Item 19.
• Margins are scenario assumptions. The 1.75%, 4.75%, and 7.75% displayed margins are a rounded sensitivity around the IRS-derived 4.753% base; they are not FDD results.
• The IRS measure is Net Income, not cash flow. It is after aggregate deductions that include interest, depreciation, salaries, wages, and compensation of officers; it is before personal income tax and does not capture loan-principal payments.
• No after-tax figure is published. Federal, state, and local tax outcomes depend on entity form, owner compensation, deductions, jurisdiction, and personal circumstances.

How are Royalty Fee and marketing obligations treated?

The FDD fees are treated as a material comparability risk rather than subtracted a second time from the IRS all-in margin. Item 6 requires a 6% Royalty Fee or $1,500 per month, whichever is greater; a 1.5% Brand Fund Contribution on the first $5 million of annual Gross Revenue; and 6% of cumulative Gross Revenue for Local Marketing starting in the third month after opening. The current Technology Fee is $100 per month, with additional vendor technology and call-center costs that vary.

At the $610,560 base revenue anchor, the three percentage-based obligations total approximately $82,426 before the Technology Fee and other variable vendor charges. Because the IRS aggregate “other deductions” category does not reveal whether or how franchise fees are represented, subtracting 13.5% again would risk double counting. This unresolved mismatch is the main reason the evidence-confidence rating is Limited.

No, but a qualified Key Person must manage day-to-day operations from the business office. Item 15 states that the Key Person need not be an Owner, must complete required training, must have authority to bind the franchisee in operating decisions, and must work on premises. Thispermits a manager-run structure, but it does not make the investment passive.

Manager-run earnings

Estimated residual Net Income after normal operating deductions and an assumed paid-management burden. This is the $8,000–$70,000 range.

Owner-operator benefit

Manager-run residual plus the modeled market value of management labor performed by the owner. This is the $111,000–$173,000 range.

Owner salary or draw

A payment method, not a separate measure of business economics. Salary may be an operating expense; draws and distributions depend on entity structure and available cash.

Personal take-home pay

Not estimated. It depends on taxes, debt principal, capital spending, working-capital needs, retained earnings, and owner circumstances.

Why is the owner-operator uplift set at $103,000?

The $103,000 figure is a derived same-brand labor-value proxy, not a disclosed annual salary. Item 7’s high estimate includes $25,750 for three months of a full-time General Manager or Operations Manager and governmental withholdings. Annualizing that three-month amount produces $103,000. The low Item 7 estimate is $0 because it assumes the principal Owner devotes full working time to supervision and management.

The annualization assumes a steady monthly cost and does not adjust for bonuses, benefits, regional wage differences, payroll-tax changes, or management scale. It should be replaced with an actual local compensation budget before a buyer relies on the owner-operator benefit figure.

Technician economics and the gap between a mature Territory and a startup Territory are the largest operational uncertainties. Item 19 supplies a strong revenue distribution, but no same-brand expense distribution. A single average industry margin cannot capture differences in service mix, material markup, technician utilization, callbacks, memberships, water-treatment work, drain work, fleet age, local wages, insurance, licensing, occupancy, call conversion, or advertising efficiency.

• Territory maturity: the full-year Item 19 cohort excludes 2025 openings, partial-year closures, and non-reporting Territories.
• Multiple-Territory ownership: per-franchisee revenue cannot be divided into owner income without the number, age, and overhead structure of each Territory.
• Industry mismatch: IRS NAICS 238220 combines plumbing and HVAC contractors, service and new construction, and many business sizes.
• Accounting mismatch: IRS Net Income includes interest and depreciation and may reflect officer compensation differently from a buyer’s planned entity.
• Required spending: the FDD’s 13.5% core sales-linked burden is high enough that marketing productivity and fee classification materially affect margin comparability.
• Debt and capital spending: loan principal, vehicle replacement, equipment purchases, and working-capital growth can reduce cash available even when accounting Net Income is positive.

The Federal Trade Commission’s franchise buyer guide warns that Gross Sales do not reveal actual costs or profits and recommends examining Item 19’s population, limitations, and written substantiation. The official Benjamin Franklin Plumbing consumer website confirms that locations are independently owned and operated, while the Authority Brands profile identifies the brand’s parent-network context.

Use $8,000–$70,000 as a manager-run decision range and $111,000–$173,000 as an active owner-operator benefit range, not as a forecast. The figures are scenario-based. The most important earnings driver is revenue productivity per technician and Territory after labor, materials, and required marketing. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand operating-expense and owner-compensation data in Item 19.

Before signing, a buyer should request the written substantiation for Item 19, obtain Territory-level profit-and-loss statements for comparable mature operators, and reconcile the following questions with multiple current and former franchisees:

• What were Gross Revenue, gross profit, operating profit, owner compensation, and cash distributions for each of the last three years?
• How many Territories, technicians, trucks, dispatchers, and managers produced those results?
• Which expenses are included in cost of goods sold, payroll, Local Marketing, Brand Fund, ServiceTitan, call-center, vehicle, and corporate overhead lines?
• Does the owner work as Key Person, general manager, salesperson, plumber, or portfolio supervisor—and how many hours per week?
• What did startup-year losses and working-capital needs look like before the Territory reached a full-year operating cadence?
• How much annual cash is reserved for vehicle replacement, equipment, insurance claims, taxes, and debt principal?

FDD citations: Benjamin Franklin Plumbing 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 26, 2026: Item 6, pp. 12–22; Item 7, pp. 23–27; Item 15, p. 57; Item 19, pp. 66–70; Item 20, pp. 70–78. No public official PDF matching the reviewed document was verified, so the FDD citations are intentionally unlinked.