How Much Does a Church's Texas Chicken Franchise Owner Make?

It measures average Restaurant Operating Profit (EBITDAR), not an owner's salary, distribution, or after-tax take-home pay. The official figure applies to the All Freestanding Franchise population for fiscal 2025. Item 19 defines EBITDAR as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and rent.

The measure is useful because it includes the major restaurant-level expenses reported in the same table: Food Cost, Labor Cost, Controllables, Non-Controllables, Marketing, and Royalty. It is incomplete as an owner-earnings measure because rent or mortgage expense, entity-level office and accounting costs, financing, replacement capital expenditures, and personal taxes are not fully captured.

Gross Sales

All qualifying restaurant revenue under the FDD definition. It is the top line, not earnings.

Labor Cost

Includes hourly labor, general- and assistant-manager salaries, payroll taxes, health insurance, vacation, sick pay, bonuses, and workers' compensation. Manager compensation is therefore already inside the reported EBITDAR.

Controllables

Restaurant-level expenses affected by management, including maintenance, repairs, supplies, services, delivery commissions, and utilities.

Non-Controllables

Includes items such as operating permits, licenses, and insurance, but the FDD explicitly says this line excludes rent.

Restaurant Operating Profit (EBITDAR)

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and rent. It is a store-level operating measure, not a promise of cash available to the owner.

The translation produces approximately -$27,000 in the Conservative scenario, $108,000 in the Base scenario, and $309,000 in the Upside scenario. These are independent estimates for one manager-run U.S. freestanding unit, anchored to fiscal 2025 Item 19 results and stated as pre-tax owner earnings before financing principal payments, personal income taxes, depreciation, amortization, and replacement capital expenditures.

• Occupancy is editorial, not FDD-reported. The 10%, 8%, and 6% rates are planning assumptions designed to show how local rent or mortgage expense changes the result.
• Owner/entity overhead is editorial. The 3%, 2%, and 1.5% rates cover excluded owner-level office, accounting, legal, administrative, and similar costs without recharging restaurant expenses already shown in Item 19.
• Royalty and Marketing are not subtracted twice. The standard 5% Royalty and 5% Marketing lines are already included in the official EBITDAR.
• Debt and taxes remain separate. Item 10 says the franchisor does not offer or guarantee financing. Interest, loan principal, personal income taxes, depreciation, amortization, and replacement capital expenditures are excluded from these scenarios.

The official fiscal 2025 All Freestanding Franchise income statement leaves $234,836 of EBITDAR after $1,035,483 of disclosed restaurant-level costs. Food Cost and Labor Cost together consume about 57.3% of average Gross Sales; Royalty and Marketing consume another 9.9% using the reported dollar amounts.

Potentially, but only as an estimated owner-operator benefit created by replacing paid management labor rather than as passive profit. For the U.S. restaurant format, the 2026 FDD requires an approved Operating Principal to devote full time and best efforts to supervising the restaurant and nearby affiliated restaurants unless Cajun Global LLC grants a written waiver. Fiscal 2025 Item 19 already includes general- and assistant-manager salaries in Labor Cost.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics food service manager benchmark reports a May 2024 median annual wage of $63,040 in food services and drinking places. Adding that wage benchmark solely as labor value produces illustrative owner-operator benefits of approximately $36,000, $171,000, and $372,000 across the three scenarios.

Sales distribution, food and labor efficiency, occupancy, and reporting exclusions create substantial uncertainty in the fiscal 2025 U.S. results. This is an uncertainty assessment, not an additional franchisor earnings claim, and the freestanding, convenience-store, company-operated, and franchised populations should not be blended into one universal result.

Item 19, Table 5 reports average Gross Sales of $743,492 in the first quartile and $1,628,718 in the fourth quartile for 421 franchised freestanding drive-thru restaurants. The quartiles are descriptive groups, not outcome probabilities, and the table provides sales rather than owner earnings.

Tables 1 through 7 exclude restaurants open fewer than 26 weeks, and certain sales tables impose a 52-week rule. Gross Sales were annualized for restaurants not open for the full fiscal year. Table 2 excludes 116 franchised restaurants that did not provide P&L information and 104 Puerto Rico franchised restaurants. The franchisor states that franchisee data were not audited or verified.

Item 20 provides context rather than proof of profitability: franchised outlets increased from 714 to 722 during 2025, with 21 openings, one termination, and 12 outlets ceasing operations for other reasons. System count movement does not reveal the earnings of surviving, closed, or transferred units.

The official 2026 FDD shows that the standard 5% Royalty and 5% Marketing charge are already included in fiscal 2025 Item 19, but digital, technology, support, supply-chain, and location-specific costs require account-level confirmation. Item 6 lists a current digital fee of $2,665 annually plus 5% of first-party digital sales, a Restaurant Support Fund charge of $75 per four-week period, and variable supply-chain surcharges on specified products.

The scenario does not subtract those items again because the submitted P&Ls may already book some or all of them within Controllables or another operating line. A buyer should obtain the written Item 19 substantiation and a sample franchisee chart of accounts to prevent either omission or double counting.

Verify the occupancy burden, the exact P&L account mapping, and the manager structure for comparable U.S. freestanding restaurants. This is due-diligence guidance for interpreting the fiscal 2025 official EBITDAR, because those items determine whether it converts into distributable cash, compensation for owner labor, or a loss.

• Request Item 19 written substantiation. Confirm how the high, overall-average, median, and low observations were selected and whether the same restaurants generated each paired sales and expense column.
• Interview comparable franchisees. Prioritize freestanding U.S. restaurants with similar drive-thru configuration, building age, market wages, rent structure, digital mix, and annual Gross Sales.
• Reconcile rent and common-area charges. Obtain the actual lease, percentage-rent provisions, taxes, insurance, maintenance, and landlord pass-throughs rather than applying a national percentage.
• Map every recurring Item 6 charge. Identify whether digital fees, first-party digital sales fees, Restaurant Support Fund charges, co-op contributions, and supply-chain surcharges are already inside the historical P&L.
• Separate owner labor from business profit. Determine whether the Operating Principal will replace a general manager, supervise multiple restaurants, or work alongside the existing manager team.
• Model financing and replacement capital separately. Obtain lender terms, required reserves, equipment replacement schedules, and remodel obligations. Do not use EBITDAR as debt-free cash flow.
• Ask about excluded and exited outlets. Compare reporting restaurants with Item 20 openings, closures, transfers, and former franchisees to understand survivorship and reporting-selection risk.