How Much Does a Black Bear Diner Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 discloses restaurant sales and a company-affiliated 4-Wall EBITDA measure, not franchise owner earnings. The 2025 franchised population contains 88 full-year, non-casino restaurants; the selected-cost population contains 70 company-affiliated restaurants operating for the full fiscal year.

For franchised restaurants, average Gross Sales were $2,820,694 and median Gross Sales were $2,697,884. The FDD also divides the 88 restaurants into sales thirds: the bottom-third median was $2,080,070, the middle-third median was $2,697,884, and the top-third median was $3,762,250. These are sales figures, not profit or owner pay. Source: 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD, Item 19, pp. 40-42.

For company-affiliated restaurants, the FDD reports average 4-Wall EBITDA of $332,130, or 12.0% of Gross Sales, and median 4-Wall EBITDA of $295,578. The definition deducts Cost of Goods Sold, Labor, Operating costs, and Occupancy costs. Labor includes restaurant-level salaries and wages for salaried and hourly managers and employees, including taxes and insurance. Source: 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD, Item 19, pp. 43-44.

Item 20 shows that franchised outlets increased from 92 to 97 during 2025, with seven openings and two outlets ceasing operations for other reasons. The seven new restaurants were excluded from the full-year Item 19 sales cohort. Source: 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD, Item 20, pp. 45-48.

The FDD supports a reproducible manager-run estimate by subtracting franchise-specific recurring percentage fees from the disclosed company-affiliated 4-Wall EBITDA margin. For fiscal 2025, the calculation uses a 12.0% average 4-Wall EBITDA margin less 6.5 percentage points for royalty and advertising obligations, leaving a 5.5% modeled residual.

What does the direct average-column calculation produce?

The direct FDD arithmetic produces $152,787. This is a derived 2025 figure for a company-affiliated average restaurant adjusted for the fees a franchisee would incur; it is not a reported average for franchised restaurants.

Source: 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD, Item 19, pp. 43-44. The result is approximately 5.54% of the disclosed average company-affiliated Gross Sales. The FDD's median-column arithmetic produces $120,768, but medians for separate measures need not describe the same restaurant, so it is not an official median owner-earnings result.

What are the conservative, base, and upside scenarios?

The three 2025 scenarios produce estimated manager-run pre-tax owner earnings of $114,404, $148,384, and $206,924. The revenue anchors are the FDD's disclosed franchised sales tiers; each uses the same 5.5% FDD-derived residual margin so the chart isolates the effect of sales variation.

An owner who works full time and genuinely replaces a paid general manager could have an estimated owner-operator benefit of about $177,000 to $270,000. This 2025 scenario adds a $63,040 BLS restaurant-manager wage proxy to the manager-run residual; the added amount compensates the owner for labor and is not passive business profit.

Item 15 requires the restaurant to remain under the exclusive and direct full-time supervision of either the individual franchisee or a general manager. Item 19's Labor measure already includes salaried and hourly managers, employees, taxes, and insurance. Therefore, the manager-run scenarios already expense management labor. Source: 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD, Item 15, p. 33; Item 19, p. 44.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Food Service Managers profile reports a May 2024 median annual wage of $63,040 in food services and drinking places. BLS wage data exclude self-employed workers and do not represent a franchise owner's distributions, payroll taxes, benefits, or the total loaded cost of a general manager.

The narrow $114,000-$207,000 range changes substantially when the residual margin moves. The table below is an independent 2025 sensitivity analysis using the same FDD revenue anchors and margins of 2.5%, 5.5%, and 8.5%. The 2.5% and 8.5% margins are analytical assumptions three percentage points below and above the base; they are not Item 19 results.

The most important earnings drivers are restaurant sales and store-level margin. At the all-franchised median sales level, every one percentage-point change in margin moves annual pre-tax earnings by about $26,979. A three-point margin change therefore moves the result by roughly $80,937.

Item 6 also permits BBDI LLC to increase the Marketing Fund contribution from the current 1% of Gross Sales to 3% on 30 days' notice. If that full increase applied with no offsetting improvement, it would reduce the base scenario by about $53,958, from $148,384 to approximately $94,426. Source: 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD, Item 6, pp. 7-11.

The disclosed lowest company-affiliated 4-Wall EBITDA was -$128,626, or -7.1%, before royalties and advertising. That observation means the scenario range is not a floor and operating losses are possible. The FDD does not identify whether the lowest sales and lowest EBITDA observations are the same restaurant, so no precise franchise-adjusted loss should be calculated from the two extremes.

• Included: Cost of Goods Sold, restaurant-level Labor, Operating costs, Occupancy costs, 4.5% royalty, 1% Marketing Fund contribution, and 1% minimum local advertising.
• Not established by Item 19: franchisee-level general and administrative expenses, owner salary or draws, distributions, recurring capital expenditures, remodel reserves, working-capital changes, or portfolio overhead.
• Technology treatment: no separate technology deduction is added because the FDD's 4-Wall EBITDA definition already includes software fees, credit-card fees, delivery commissions, and other operating costs. A buyer should still reconcile franchise-specific vendor charges to actual statements.
• Excluded from owner earnings: personal income taxes and financing principal payments.
• Debt treatment: interest is not separately identified in the 4-Wall EBITDA definition, and Item 10 states that BBDI LLC does not offer or guarantee financing. Financing must be modeled separately for each buyer.
• Multi-unit treatment: the figures are per restaurant. Multiplying by unit count would ignore ramp-up, shared overhead, development timing, and multi-unit management requirements.

A buyer should verify franchisee-level profit statements, local cost assumptions, and the precise owner role before treating any scenario as relevant. The 2026 FDD supplies strong same-brand sales and company-affiliated store-cost evidence, but the largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of franchised restaurant EBITDA or owner compensation data.

• Request the written substantiation supporting Item 19 and confirm how Gross Sales, Labor, Occupancy, Operating costs, and 4-Wall EBITDA are calculated.
• Ask multiple current franchisees for recent store-level profit-and-loss statements, including weak, central, and strong locations rather than only selected performers.
• Confirm whether franchisee accounting, insurance, professional fees, travel, technology, maintenance, and other overhead sit inside or outside the compared store-level measure.
• Test food, wage, rent, utility, credit-card, delivery, and repair assumptions for the exact site and state. The 70 company-affiliated restaurants were concentrated most heavily in Texas, Arizona, and California.
• Determine whether the owner will work full time, retain a general manager, or operate multiple restaurants. Item 15 requires direct full-time supervision by the owner or a trained general manager.
• Model interest, principal payments, maintenance capital, and remodel reserves separately. Do not subtract the Item 7 startup investment from one year's sales.
• Use Item 20 contacts to interview current and former franchisees about sales ramp, manager turnover, closures, transfers, and the cash retained after required reinvestment.

The Federal Trade Commission's franchise buyer guidance recommends examining the source, limitations, and assumptions behind Item 19 and requesting written substantiation. The 2026 Black Bear Diner FDD states that substantiation will be made available on reasonable request.