How Much Does a Big Frog Custom T-Shirts & More Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 reports sales and partial operating-cost data—not owner earnings. For 2025, the FDD presents a detailed table for 62 franchised Stores that had operated for at least 12 months and submitted monthly profit-and-loss statements. It separates those Stores into revenue quartiles and reports Gross Revenue, COGS, rent, payroll, marketing, utilities, customer count, and average sale. The table expressly excludes Royalty Fees.

The FDD defines Gross Revenue as total gross sales receipts less tax. COGS includes apparel and decorating material but excludes labor. Marketing includes Brand Fund Contributions. Those definitions matter: the remainder after the listed columns is not automatically profit because merchant processing, insurance, accounting, maintenance, office costs, technology, licenses, and other expenses are not shown as separate Item 19 columns. Source: 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, pp. 34–38.

The estimate uses observed Item 19 quartile medians and quartile-level median cost ratios, then completes the expense structure with current FDD fees and an explicit reserve. Conservative, Base, and Upside are analytical scenarios—not probabilities, forecasts, or franchisor claims.

The formula is a bottom-up operating bridge. For each 2025 revenue quartile, the model applies the median COGS, rent, payroll, and utilities ratios. Marketing is set at the higher of the observed quartile median or the contractual 6.5% combined Brand Fund and local-marketing requirement. It then subtracts a 6% Royalty Fee, $4,200 annual Internal Systems Fees, $6,000 of estimated annual software subscriptions, and an 8%–12% reserve for other operating expenses.

• Other operating expense reserve: 12% Conservative, 10% Base, and 8% Upside for merchant processing, insurance, accounting, office and communications costs, repairs, routine maintenance, permits, and other expenses absent from the Item 19 columns.
• Technology: $350 per month Internal Systems Fee plus the Item 11 estimate of $500 per month for ongoing software. Potential maintenance and upgrade costs remain inside the other-expense reserve.
• Excluded: personal income taxes, financing interest and principal, depreciation, major equipment replacement, remodels, owner draws, and extraordinary or contingent fees.
• Marketing treatment: Item 19 marketing includes Brand Fund Contributions, so the model does not add 1.5% again after applying the 6.5% contractual combined floor.

Official 2025 quartile medians range from $254,683 to $886,992. That spread is the clearest same-brand evidence that one system average cannot support a narrow owner-earnings claim. The scenarios use the Fourth, Third, and Second Quartile medians; the First Quartile is shown for context but is not treated as a likely or guaranteed outcome.

An active owner may create an estimated owner-operator benefit of roughly $12,000 to $103,000, but only if the owner genuinely replaces paid manager labor. This is not pure business profit. It combines the modeled residual with $53,380 of labor value, the May 2025 national mean annual wage for First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage table.

Item 15 says the owner or Principal Owner should devote time and best efforts to management and operations. If the owner is not actively on-site, the Store must have a full-time designated Manager with day-to-day responsibility. Item 19 does not state whether reported payroll includes owner compensation, a manager salary, both, or neither. The add-back is therefore conditional and should be verified Store by Store. Source: 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 15, pp. 29–30.

Sales-linked fees and required marketing create the largest fixed contractual drag after product, payroll, and occupancy costs. For a mature Store, the core recurring burden is a 6% Royalty Fee, 1.5% Brand Fund Contribution, and at least 5% of Gross Sales for local marketing, plus fixed technology charges.

The main uncertainty is not the arithmetic; it is what the FDD cost table omits and who is included in the reported population. The calculations reproduce disclosed line items, but the resulting residual depends materially on the expense reserve and on whether payroll already contains owner or manager compensation.

• Population reconciliation: Item 19 states that 66 Stores were mature and that 14 newer Stores were excluded, while Item 20 reports 73 franchised U.S. outlets at year-end. Those statements do not reconcile on their face. The 62-Store cost table itself is internally countable, but the broader cohort description should be clarified in written substantiation.
• Geographic scope: Item 19 calls the population “all outlets” and does not expressly isolate U.S. Stores, while Item 20 separately identifies Canadian outlets. The article therefore does not assume the 62-Store table is purely U.S. and treats geography as an unresolved limitation.
• Unaudited submissions: the Point-of-Sale and franchisee P&L data were not independently audited or verified by the franchisor.
• Missing definitions: Item 19 does not disclose Operating Profit, EBITDA, Net Income, owner salary, manager salary, depreciation, debt service, or capital expenditures.
• Survivorship and maturity: Stores under 12 months and four mature Stores missing P&Ls are excluded, so the table is not a complete picture of every outlet operating during 2025.

The closest official industry classification is NAICS 323113, Commercial Screen Printing, which includes printing on T-shirts and other apparel. The Census Annual Integrated Economic Survey confirms that operating-expense analysis normally includes payroll, benefits, rent, utilities, purchased services, materials, supplies, and other costs beyond the FDD columns.

The IRS 2023 nonfarm sole-proprietor table is useful only as a boundary check: “Printing and related support activities” showed a −2.6% aggregate net-income-to-receipts ratio across all returns but a 19.1% ratio among returns with net income. That selection-sensitive spread is not applied to Big Frog because sole proprietors differ in scale, legal form, franchise fees, and owner-labor treatment.