For a mature, full-time Chem-Dry owner portfolio resembling the owners in the 2026 Item 19 sample, the strongest defensible independent range is approximately $25,000 to $186,000 in annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit, with a base scenario near $55,700. The range is estimated, not reported by Chem-Dry, and it combines official Gross Sales bands with an external operating-margin benchmark. A manager-run version of the same model ranges from an operating loss to approximately $137,300 after one illustrative supervisor wage.
- Legal franchisor
- Chem-Dry, Inc., formerly Harris Research, Inc.; its parent is BFG Holdco, Inc., within the BELFOR corporate group.
- FDD basis
- Franchise Disclosure Document issued March 30, 2026; Item 19, pp. 46–47; Item 20, pp. 48–59; recurring obligations in Item 6, pp. 11–19; owner participation in Item 15, p. 41.
- Official measure
- Gross Sales for 226 responding franchise owners operating 584 Chem-Dry businesses. It is a per-owner portfolio measure, not a per-outlet earnings measure.
- Formats represented
- Population-based Franchised Areas and household-based protected territories are combined in Item 19; the FDD does not publish separate sales results for the two models.
- External benchmarks
- IRS Sole Proprietorship Returns, Tax Year 2022 and BLS Services to Buildings and Dwellings wage data, May 2023.
- Date checked
- July 19, 2026. The official U.S. Chem-Dry franchise website was used for current brand and operating-model context, not as the source of the earnings range.
Median 2025 Gross Sales for all 226 responding franchise owners; this is revenue, not earnings.
The average exceeds the median substantially, indicating a right-skewed owner-portfolio distribution.
Responding owners collectively operated 584 franchises, an average of about 2.58 businesses per owner.
Item 19 warns that new franchisees begin without the established customer base reflected in this mature cohort.
Current monthly franchise, CRM and brand-fund charges plus the annual minimum product purchase, per current-offer franchise.
What does Chem-Dry Item 19 actually measure?
Officially, Item 19 measures 2025 Gross Sales by responding franchise owner—not annual owner earnings and not revenue per individual outlet. The 226 owners operated 584 businesses, had been in their markets for an average of 20.9 years, operated full-time, and had at least one year of operating history.
The full-sample median was $214,671 and the average was $319,340. Only 81 of 226 owners, or 35.8%, exceeded the average, so the median is the more decision-useful central sales observation. The highest reported owner portfolio produced $1,772,121 and the lowest produced $75,126, but those endpoints should not be treated as normal outcomes.
Item 19 median Gross Sales by selected owner group, calendar year 2025
Interpretation: the top-quartile median was almost six times the bottom-quartile median, so sales level is the dominant driver of any owner-earnings estimate.
Source: 2026 Chem-Dry FDD, Item 19, pp. 46–47. Values are unaudited Gross Sales from responding owners’ customer-management software.
Item 19 expressly omits the variable costs, fixed operating expenses, and other deductions needed to calculate net income or profit. Gross Sales therefore cannot be described as salary, take-home pay, distributions, EBITDA, cash flow, or owner benefit.
Who was excluded from the official sample?
Officially, 231 franchisees operating 381 Chem-Dry businesses were excluded. They had not implemented the required customer-management software, had not supplied information, and/or operated part-time or semi-retired. The FDD also says the responding owners developed recurring customer bases over long operating histories and that a new owner should expect lower revenue.
Item 19 combines population-based and household-based operating models. The detailed Item 20 tables show 901 U.S. population-based outlets and 22 U.S. household-based outlets at the end of 2025. Item 19 does not separate their sales, so the format mixture prevents a clean territory-by-territory earnings estimate.
What annual owner earnings do the sales bands imply?
Estimated owner-operator benefit is approximately $24,600 in the Conservative scenario, $55,700 in the Base scenario, and $186,200 in the Upside scenario. These are independent 2025-revenue scenarios for mature, full-time owner portfolios; none is an official Chem-Dry profit figure or a forecast of the most likely result.
The model uses the Item 19 bottom-quartile median, full-sample median, and top-quartile median as revenue anchors. It applies a 25.9263% derived net-income ratio from 2022 IRS Statistics of Income data for sole proprietorships in administrative and support services, the broad sector containing carpet and upholstery cleaning. The reproducible benchmark calculation is $29.134841 billion of net income divided by $112.375586 billion of business receipts. Because IRS Schedule C net income generally includes the economic value of an owner’s work rather than deducting an owner salary, the result is labeled owner-operator benefit, not passive business profit.
| Scenario | Item 19 revenue anchor | Margin assumption | Estimated owner-operator benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Conservative Bottom 25% median |
$107,463 | 22.9263% | $24,637 |
|
Base All-owner median |
$214,671 | 25.9263% | $55,656 |
|
Upside Top 25% median |
$643,867 | 28.9263% | $186,247 |
Estimated annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit before financing principal and personal income taxes
Interpretation: the revenue band drives more of the modeled difference than the six-percentage-point margin span.
Formula: Item 19 Gross Sales anchor × scenario margin. The 25.9263% center equals $29.134841 billion of IRS administrative-and-support sole-proprietor net income ÷ $112.375586 billion of receipts; Conservative and Upside use exactly minus or plus 3 percentage points. Calculations use the unrounded ratio before dollar rounding.
Sources: 2026 Chem-Dry FDD, Item 19, pp. 46–47; IRS nonfarm sole-proprietorship statistics; 2022 IRS SOI article and tables.
What is included and excluded in “owner-operator benefit”?
Estimated owner-operator benefit is a pre-tax accounting-style result, not after-tax take-home pay or cash flow. The IRS benchmark reflects broad Schedule C deductions, including depreciation and business interest in aggregate, but it does not separately value the proprietor’s labor. The scenario therefore combines residual business economics with compensation for work performed by the owner.
- Included: normal operating deductions reflected in the broad IRS net-income ratio, with current FDD obligations treated as part of the operating-cost environment rather than subtracted a second time.
- Owner compensation: no separate owner salary is deducted in the owner-operator scenarios; labor value is embedded in the result.
- Manager compensation: excluded from owner-operator benefit and added separately in the manager-run analysis.
- Interest and depreciation: included only to the unknown average extent represented in the IRS benchmark; they are not separately reconstructed for a Chem-Dry operation.
- Capital spending and financing principal: excluded. Vehicle replacement, equipment replacement, and debt principal reduce cash available even when they do not reduce the modeled accounting result in the same period.
- Personal income taxes: excluded because entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, and owner circumstances vary.
How does owner involvement change the result?
Estimated manager-run residual is approximately −$24,300, $6,700, and $137,300 across the same three scenarios after subtracting one $48,970 supervisor wage. This is a scenario, not an official Chem-Dry result. The 2026 FDD does not require the owner to operate personally, but it recommends participation and requires a designated operator to be disclosed and trained.
The replacement-wage assumption uses the May 2023 BLS mean annual wage for First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers in Services to Buildings and Dwellings. It excludes employer payroll taxes and benefits, so a fully loaded manager cost would normally be higher. It also assumes that one supervisor can replace the owner’s operating labor, which may be unrealistic for a multi-franchise portfolio.
Owner-operator benefit versus manager-run residual after a $48,970 wage assumption
Interpretation: at the Base sales and margin assumptions, nearly all modeled owner-operator benefit is attributable to the labor value replaced by one supervisor wage.
Source and formula: owner-operator benefit minus $48,970, based on BLS May 2023 industry wage estimates. Benefits, payroll taxes, and additional managers are not included.
A buyer should not interpret the $55,700 Base owner-operator result as passive profit. In this model, $48,970 of the difference between owner-operated and manager-run economics is assigned to labor that the owner performs. The official Chem-Dry earning-potential discussion also identifies owner involvement as a performance variable, but it does not publish owner profit.
Which current FDD charges can materially affect annual earnings?
Official current-offer terms identify at least $15,426.80 per franchise in annual monthly charges and minimum product purchases before local marketing, labor, vehicles, insurance, fuel, processing fees, and other operating costs. This is a derived annualization of Item 6 amounts, not a complete expense budget and not a direct deduction from the scenario margin.
| Current-offer obligation | FDD amount | Annualized amount | Treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Franchise Fee | $491.40/month | $5,896.80 | Fixed monthly charge; subject to annual CPI adjustment. |
| Customer-management software | $349/month | $4,188 | Required CRM fee. |
| Brand Marketing Fund | $160/month | $1,920 | Current contribution; the FDD permits future increases. |
| Minimum proprietary-product purchase | $3,422/year | $3,422 | Required purchase per franchise; it may overlap with normal cleaning-solution cost. |
| First-year local marketing | $20,000 minimum | $20,000 | First 12 months only: $1,000/month for four months, then $2,000/month for eight months. |
The identified first-year total rises to $35,426.80 per franchise when the minimum local marketing program is included. That still excludes core operating expenses. The FDD also states that franchisees who purchased earlier may operate under different fee structures, while Item 19 includes long-tenured owners. Applying current fees mechanically to every responding owner would therefore blend incompatible contract cohorts.
The scenario uses an all-in IRS net-income ratio, so these charges are shown as a reasonableness check rather than subtracted again. A separate subtraction could double-count expenses already represented in the benchmark. Conversely, because the IRS sector includes many non-franchised businesses, its all-in ratio may understate the specific burden of franchise charges. This unresolved comparability issue is a principal reason the evidence confidence is LIMITED.
Why is the reasonable earnings range so wide?
The answer is uncertain because the strongest same-brand evidence reports owner-portfolio revenue for a mature, self-selected reporting cohort, while the expense ratio comes from a broad external industry group. The $25,000–$186,000 range should be used as a diligence framework, not as a probability interval or promise.
- Per-owner versus per-unit: 226 owners operated 584 businesses. Item 19 does not show how many franchises sit behind each owner’s revenue or earnings.
- Mature cohort: responding owners averaged 20.9 years in their markets. A startup lacks the same recurring customer base and also bears the first-year local marketing requirement.
- Self-selection and exclusions: 231 franchisees operating 381 businesses were excluded for CRM, reporting, or part-time/semi-retired reasons.
- Format mixture: population-based and household-based models are combined, with no separate Item 19 sales table by territory model.
- Broad margin proxy: IRS administrative-and-support sole proprietorships are not a Chem-Dry franchise cohort and include businesses with different labor, fee, and asset profiles.
- Operator-cost proxy: the $48,970 BLS wage excludes benefits and payroll burden and may not replace every activity performed by an owner.
- U.S. outlet movement: derived from the detailed Item 20 tables, U.S. population-based end-of-year outlets declined from 1,239 in 2023 to 1,058 in 2024 and 901 in 2025. The U.S. household-based model ended 2025 with 22 outlets.
The Item 19 result is useful because it is same-brand, recent, and based on actual CRM records, but it is not a full-system census and it is not audited. The FTC advises buyers to distinguish gross sales from profit, examine the represented population, and request the written substantiation supporting an Item 19 claim. See the FTC Consumer’s Guide to Buying a Franchise and the FTC’s FDD due-diligence guidance.
What should a buyer verify with franchisees and substantiation?
The most important verification is a complete revenue-to-owner-cash bridge for comparable operators. This is a buyer-verification framework, not an official financial result. The questions test the exact gaps left by Item 19 rather than asking franchisees only for a headline income figure.
- Request the written Item 19 substantiation and confirm that each Gross Sales figure is aggregated by owner across all Chem-Dry businesses under that owner.
- Obtain recent profit-and-loss statements from several full-time owner-operators and manager-run owners in similar U.S. markets, then reconcile labor, payroll burden, vehicle, insurance, fuel, cleaning solutions, advertising, processing fees, CRM, franchise charges, and maintenance.
- Ask how many franchises, territories, vans, technicians, and managers support each owner’s reported sales and whether shared overhead is allocated consistently.
- Separate first-year ramp economics from the 20.9-year average-tenure cohort, including the $20,000 minimum first-year local marketing program.
- Confirm whether a prospective household-based territory is operationally and economically comparable with the population-based businesses that dominate the historical system.
- Review Item 20 closures, non-renewals, transfers, and other cessations with current and former franchisees, including the operational reasons behind the reported outlet decline.
- Model debt principal, vehicle replacement, equipment replacement, and personal taxes separately; none is captured reliably in the published owner-earnings range.
What is the strongest defensible takeaway?
The strongest defensible annual range is approximately $25,000 to $186,000 in estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit for mature, full-time owner portfolios aligned with the Item 19 sales bands; the Base scenario is approximately $55,700. This is a scenario-based result, not an official Chem-Dry earnings disclosure. The most important driver is owner-portfolio Gross Sales, while the largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand operating-expense and owner-compensation data by format, franchise count, and owner role.
A manager-run structure is materially different: after one illustrative $48,970 supervisor wage, the same scenarios produce approximately −$24,300 to $137,300, with a Base residual near $6,700 before financing principal and personal income taxes. A buyer should verify Item 19 substantiation, the number of businesses behind each owner’s sales, current-versus-legacy fee terms, manager staffing, startup ramp, and comparable franchisee profit-and-loss statements before relying on any range.