How Much Does a Christian Brothers Automotive Franchise Owner Make?

$282,274 median Total Owner Benefit

The 2026 Christian Brothers Automotive Franchise Disclosure Document reports a $282,274 median and $310,322 average Total Owner Benefit for 302 franchisee-owned stores open for all of 2025. The observed range was $60,000 to $993,699. This is the strongest official earnings evidence, but it is a cash-taken measure that includes owner salary and distributions or bonuses—not pure business profit, passive income, or after-tax take-home pay.

Evidence mode: Mode A — official disclosure Confidence: High Format: U.S. franchised repair store Measurement period: calendar 2025

Data basis

Legal franchisor

Christian Brothers Automotive Corporation, a Texas corporation.

Disclosure document

2026 U.S. FDD, issued April 17, 2026; Item 19, pages 57–64.

Population

302 franchisee-owned stores open for the entire 2025 calendar year; 24 stores opened during 2025 were excluded. Item 20 reported no company-owned outlets.

Public sources checked

Official U.S. Christian Brothers Automotive franchise website and Federal Trade Commission franchise guidance. Checked July 18, 2026.

The official evidence supports a broad, distribution-based decision range rather than one promised income figure. The median Total Owner Benefit was $131,019 for the bottom 20%, $282,274 for all stores, and $502,464 for the top 20%. Those three medians are more useful for planning than the full $60,000 to $993,699 observed range, but they are performance-band statistics—not probabilities or forecasts.

2025 Total Owner Benefit distribution

Low-to-high range with median and average markers for the bottom 20%, all 302 stores, and the top 20%.

Median Average

Interpretation: The all-store median sits well below the top-performer average, so the $310,322 average should not be treated as a typical guaranteed outcome.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, Schedule 19.3A, page 62.

Total Owner Benefit is an official cash-to-owner measure, not a conventional profit line. The FDD defines it as the sum of the owner's salary plus any cash distribution or bonus taken during the calendar year. It excludes the owner's benefit from major medical insurance premiums and excludes the benefit of principal reduction on the original commercial loan.

Net Sales

Revenue from labor, parts, subcontracted work, and supplies after labor and parts discounts. It is not income.

Gross Profit

Net Sales less technician labor, parts, and subcontracted labor or parts. It is before General and Administrative Expenses.

Net Operating Income

Income before depreciation, amortization, the franchisor royalty, and the franchisee or owner royalty. It is not the same as Total Owner Benefit.

Total Owner Benefit

Owner salary plus cash distributions or bonuses actually taken. It is pre-personal-tax and does not equal retained earnings or passive profit.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, Notes 2 and 3, pages 63–64.

The official 2025 cohort data show a material maturity effect. Median Total Owner Benefit increased from $160,281 in the first full year to $304,893 for stores in their fifth year or later. The relationship is descriptive, not a promise that every store will follow the same path.

Median Total Owner Benefit by store age

Each cohort includes franchisee-owned stores open for all of 2025.

Interpretation: Store maturity is one of the clearest disclosed earnings drivers, although location quality, operating execution, and expense control still create wide variation inside each age cohort.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, Schedule 19.2, page 61.

The disclosed owner benefit should be treated as compensation for an actively supervised business, not passive income. Item 15 requires the Principal Operator to personally supervise the franchise, while a Service Manager assists with day-to-day operations. A third party cannot replace the owner's obligations without prior written consent, and approval would not relieve the owner of those obligations.

This subtraction is an analytical decomposition of the official median, not a separate Item 19 representation. The $222,274 is not automatically pure profit: it represents the cash distribution or bonus component implied by the standardized salary treatment and does not show retained cash, capital expenditures, or personal taxes.

The official business-model page and official franchise-investment page describe the $60,000 salary structure. The controlling FDD adds the essential limitation: the salary is contingent on the business making enough profit and is not guaranteed by Christian Brothers Automotive Corporation.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, pages 14–15; Item 15, pages 51–52; Item 19, pages 57–64.

The same 280-store cohort recorded slightly higher average Net Sales in 2025 but lower median and average Total Owner Benefit. This is official evidence that revenue growth does not automatically translate into higher owner cash in a particular year.

Calculation: Percentage changes use unrounded FDD values and are rounded to one decimal place. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, Schedules 19.1B and 19.3B, pages 58–63.

The FDD's reported Total Owner Benefit already reflects the current-offering adjustment to a 50% Royalty Fee on Split Profits and a standardized $60,000 owner salary. A buyer should not take the reported owner benefit and subtract those obligations a second time. The recurring obligations still matter because they help explain why stores with similar sales can produce different owner cash.

Royalty Fee

50% of monthly Split Profits. Split Profits equal business revenue and other value less approved Shared Expenses.

Occupancy

New-store base rent is approximately $22,000 to $38,000 per month, plus triple-net costs, with annual base-rent increases of 1.5%.

Required systems

Current recurring amounts include $550 per month for administrative and accounting services, $200 per month for IT support, approximately $11,000 annually for software maintenance or licenses, and approximately $725 per month for operating systems and internet failover, plus data overages.

Marketing

National and regional marketing payments totaled $12,500 annually as of December 31, 2025, while local advertising remains a separate store operating expense.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, pages 8–17. These are operating obligations, not an invitation to recalculate the official Total Owner Benefit by double-counting expenses.

The confidence rating is High because a current FDD directly reports an owner cash measure for the full eligible 2025 franchised-store population. The uncertainty is still material because the tables do not separate single-unit and multi-unit owners, do not quantify owner hours, do not show retained cash or capital expenditures by store, and do not standardize each franchisee's financing structure or personal tax position.

• Request Item 19 substantiation. Reconcile the store-level Total Owner Benefit figures to salary, cash distributions, and bonuses for the cohort most comparable to the proposed market.
• Separate owner labor from residual profit. Ask current owners how many hours the Principal Operator works and which duties remain after the Service Manager is in place.
• Review debt service line by line. Determine how principal, interest, approved capital expenditures, and loan covenants affect cash distributions at the proposed leverage level.
• Test occupancy and labor sensitivity. Compare the proposed rent, technician payroll, office payroll, insurance, and local marketing budget with mature stores in similar markets.
• Interview several cohorts. Speak with first-year, mature, lower-performing, transferred, and multi-unit franchisees rather than relying only on system averages.

The Federal Trade Commission's consumer guide to buying a franchise explains that Item 19 claims must have a reasonable factual basis and that Item 20 helps buyers evaluate system growth and turnover. The FTC also recommends requesting written substantiation for financial performance claims in its guidance on evaluating franchise earnings representations.

The strongest central answer is the official $282,274 median Total Owner Benefit for 302 full-year 2025 franchised stores. A reasonable distribution-based planning span is approximately $131,000 to $502,000, using the medians of the bottom and top 20% performance groups. The most important disclosed driver is store maturity, with median Total Owner Benefit rising from $160,281 in the first full year to $304,893 for stores five years or older.

The largest unresolved uncertainty is how much of Total Owner Benefit represents compensation for the Principal Operator's active labor versus residual economic profit after financing, reinvestment, and store-specific capital needs. Before relying on any range, a buyer should verify the Item 19 substantiation, review the proposed store's debt and occupancy structure, and compare those assumptions with detailed interviews across multiple franchisee cohorts.