How Much Does a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Franchise Owner Make?

The 2026 FDD discloses fiscal 2025 Gross Revenues, not franchisee profit, cash flow, EBITDA, owner compensation, or take-home pay. The official figures apply to U.S. cafés open for the full fiscal year and are separated by operating format, so they should not be blended into one systemwide “average owner income” number.

Gross Revenues are café sales excluding tips and specified transaction taxes. Revenue is the top line. It does not show what remains after ingredients, payroll, rent, royalty, marketing, technology, utilities, insurance, repairs, card fees, debt service, or taxes.

Item 20 reports 22 domestic Traditional franchised outlets at the end of 2025, down from 24 at the end of 2024. Item 19 contains 21 full-year Traditional franchised cafés across its drive-thru and non-drive-thru tables. Those figures are close, but they use different eligibility and timing concepts, so this article does not present a formal population-coverage percentage. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 20, pp. 70–75.

The estimate applies FDD revenue observations to same-brand company-operated labor and cost-of-goods ratios, then deducts FDD recurring fees and explicit occupancy and operating-cost assumptions. It is a fiscal 2025 analytical model for a mature Traditional franchised café without a drive-thru; it is not an observed franchisee income statement.

• Revenue: $616,470 is the FDD bottom-quartile average, $860,002 is the overall median, and $1,270,516 is the top-quartile average for the 11 full-year franchised Traditional non-drive-thru cafés.
• Labor and cost of goods: the model uses the lower, central, and upper observations from 69 company-operated non-drive-thru cafés: labor of 38.9%, 35.0%, and 31.2%; cost of goods of 32.1%, 29.0%, and 27.8%. The franchised revenue and company-operated cost cohorts are separate populations; pairing them by scenario is an analytical sensitivity, not an observed same-store relationship.
• Percentage-based FDD fees: 9.0% of Gross Revenues, based on the standard 5.5% royalty, 2.0% Central Marketing Fee, minimum 1.0% local advertising, and 0.5% Advertising & Promotional Materials Fee.
• Occupancy: 12%, 10%, and 8% of revenue are editorial assumptions for Conservative, Base, and Upside scenarios. Actual rent, common-area charges, and real-estate taxes can be materially different.
• Other operating expenses: 10% of revenue in every scenario is an editorial allowance for utilities, routine repairs, card fees, insurance, licenses, security, professional costs, and other normal unit expenses not separately disclosed.
• Fixed recurring FDD fees: $29,200, $21,100, and $13,000 reflect the disclosed ranges for café technology and customer-facing technology, plus up to four $400 audits and the current $600 customer-experience program.

Active ownership may increase total economic benefit by replacing paid management labor, but the added amount is compensation for work performed. The difference shown here is an independent estimate for the same fiscal 2025 Traditional non-drive-thru scenario population. The 2026 FDD does not require the owner to supervise personally, yet it recommends personal supervision and requires at least one approved General Manager for each café; a Traditional café also needs a Certified Training Manager.

The owner-operator scenarios add $63,040, the May 2024 BLS median annual wage for food service managers in food services and drinking places, to the manager-run residual. This is appropriate only where the owner is qualified, approved, and actually performs the required General Manager work. It does not represent passive distributions, and it does not include employer payroll taxes, benefits, or a premium for long hours.

Manager-run pre-tax owner earnings

Residual cash after modeled unit operating expenses and recurring franchise fees, with normal manager compensation embedded in the labor proxy.

Estimated owner-operator benefit

Manager-run residual plus the benchmark value of the General Manager labor performed by the owner.

Not included

Personal income taxes, financing principal, interest, depreciation, major capital expenditures, remodel reserves, and portfolio-level overhead.

The operating commitment is substantial. Item 16 states that cafés presently must operate 14 hours per day, seven days per week, including national holidays, unless the franchisor agrees otherwise. BLS also notes that food service managers often work early mornings, nights, weekends, and holidays. Owner-operator benefit should therefore be compared with the time, schedule, and responsibility required—not treated as a free margin increase.

The drive-thru cohort had higher fiscal 2025 revenue, and the same modeling method produces a wider manager-run range of about -$29,000 to $272,000 per café, with a $97,000 base scenario. These are independent estimates for 10 full-year franchised drive-thru cafés, not reported owner earnings and not evidence that every drive-thru outperforms every non-drive location.

The drive-thru model uses the cohort’s bottom-quartile average, overall median, and top-quartile average revenue. It applies the corresponding company-operated drive-thru labor and cost-of-goods ratios, 11%, 9%, and 7% occupancy assumptions, the same 10% other-expense allowance, and the same FDD recurring-fee schedule. A drive-thru may also require a different site, construction program, traffic pattern, lease structure, equipment package, and staffing plan, so its revenue advantage cannot be interpreted without its higher site-specific capital and operating demands.

The largest standard recurring burden is the 9.0% of Gross Revenues used in the model, before variable technology and program charges. These are official 2026 FDD terms; actual fees may differ where a negotiated agreement, fee increase, veteran incentive, or program implementation applies.

At the $860,002 median revenue, the modeled percentage-based fees are approximately $77,400 before the $21,100 base fixed-fee assumption. A one-percentage-point change in revenue-based fees would change annual pre-tax earnings by roughly $8,600 at that sales level, holding everything else constant.

Confidence is Limited because the FDD reports franchised revenue but does not report franchised cost of goods, labor, occupancy, operating profit, or owner compensation. The primary result therefore depends materially on company-operated proxies and explicit editorial expense assumptions rather than a direct franchised-unit profit disclosure.

• Company-operated proxy: Item 19 says company-owned cafés are substantially similar, but it also warns that franchisees may face higher costs because company operations may receive quantity, training, labor, and insurance advantages.
• Unverified franchise reports: franchised revenue data come from royalty and other reports and were not audited or independently verified by the franchisor.
• Full-year survivor cohort: newly opened and partial-year cafés were excluded, so the tables do not measure ramp-up economics.
• Supplier control: Item 8 requires specified products and extensive purchases from the franchisor, affiliates, or designated suppliers; actual input pricing may move the cost-of-goods ratio.
• Airport sample discrepancy: Item 19 introductory text refers to 23 airport stores, while the airport table states 15. Airport results are therefore excluded from this earnings model.
• Capital and financing: Item 10 states that neither the franchisor nor its affiliates offers financing or guarantees obligations. Interest, principal, required letters of credit, remodels, and equipment replacement are outside the operating estimate.
• Taxes: no after-tax take-home figure is presented because personal taxes depend on entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, and owner circumstances.

The FTC Franchise Rule Compliance Guide explains the federal disclosure framework. Buyers should distinguish an Item 19 financial performance representation from an independent model and request the franchisor’s written substantiation for the Item 19 figures. The U.S. Census Bureau NAICS 722515 classification is a useful industry reference for snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars, but no broad Census margin was used here because it would not capture this brand’s formats, fees, supplier rules, and cohort definitions.

A buyer should reconstruct unit-level profit with current franchisees and written records rather than treat the scenario midpoint as an expected result. The checks below apply to the exact proposed U.S. format, market, owner role, and development structure.

• Request Item 19 substantiation and reconcile the franchised café’s point-of-sale Gross Revenues to royalty reports for fiscal 2025.
• Interview several current and former franchisees from Item 20, including operators above and below the disclosed median and operators in comparable rent and wage markets.
• Obtain actual cost-of-goods invoices, delivery charges, rebates, waste, promotional discounts, and supplier price-change history.
• Verify loaded payroll by role, including General Manager, Certified Training Manager, overtime, payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, benefits, and owner hours.
• Model the proposed lease line by line: base rent, percentage rent, common-area maintenance, property tax, insurance, utilities, and escalation clauses.
• Confirm which technology, audit, marketing, local advertising, training, and required-program fees apply under the specific agreement.
• Separate unit operating earnings from financing interest, principal, depreciation, remodel obligations, equipment replacement, and personal income taxes.
• For multi-unit development, model each café’s opening date, ramp-up, management layer, shared overhead, and cross-default exposure rather than multiplying a mature per-unit figure.

The brand’s official U.S. franchising page describes Traditional, drive-thru, kiosk, airport, campus, military, store-in-store, hotel, and casino formats. It also states that Traditional opportunities use a multi-unit operator model and do not offer single-unit Traditional franchises. That development structure makes portfolio staffing, timing, and shared overhead material even though this article presents per-unit earnings first.

The parent-company annual reports provide broader corporate and global brand information, not U.S. franchised café owner earnings; they are not an input to the scenario calculations.

For one mature U.S. Traditional café without a drive-thru, the strongest defensible manager-run range is approximately -$42,000 to $165,000 in annual pre-tax owner earnings, with a $39,000 base scenario. This is scenario-based, not an official Item 19 profit figure. An active owner performing the approved General Manager role may realize total owner-operator benefit of approximately $22,000 to $228,000, but roughly $63,000 of that difference represents labor value.

The most important earnings driver is the interaction between revenue and labor efficiency. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the café’s actual occupancy and other operating-cost structure, compounded by the lack of franchised cost-of-goods and profit data. Before making a decision, a buyer should verify the exact Item 19 cohort and substantiation, rebuild the income statement from comparable franchisee records, and test the proposed site’s rent, payroll, supplier costs, recurring fees, financing, and owner-work assumptions.