How Much Does a Fuzzy's Taco Shop Franchise Owner Make?

The official disclosure reports Gross Sales, not owner earnings. Item 19 covers the 12-month period ended December 28, 2025 and separates traditional franchised restaurants in Texas from those in the rest of the United States. The franchisor says the figures came from franchisee royalty reports and were not audited.

For Texas, the official Annualized Average Gross Sales were $1,317,871 and the median was $1,252,474. For the rest of the United States, the official Annualized Average Gross Sales were $1,972,292 and the median was $1,916,377. Average and median are not interchangeable: 46% of Texas restaurants and 48% of rest-of-U.S. restaurants exceeded their regional average.

Official source: 2026 Fuzzy’s Taco Shop FDD, Item 19, pages 45–47. The first and fourth quartile medians are used as scenario revenue anchors; they are not probabilities or promises.

The range multiplies official regional Gross Sales anchors by an external pre-tax income margin. The National Restaurant Association’s 2025 Operations Data Abstract summary reports that income before taxes represented a median 4.0% of sales for limited-service restaurant respondents in 2024. Census defines NAICS 722513 to include fast-casual restaurants, making limited-service restaurants the closest public operating category.

The public benchmark is not Fuzzy’s-specific and does not disclose every accounting convention in the summary. Therefore, the model uses 4.0% as a central all-in proxy and applies a transparent three-percentage-point sensitivity on each side. The 1%, 4%, and 7% margins are scenario assumptions, not FDD figures.

• Conservative: regional fourth-quartile median Gross Sales × 1% pre-tax margin.
• Base: regional overall median Gross Sales × 4% pre-tax margin.
• Upside: regional first-quartile median Gross Sales × 7% pre-tax margin.
• Fee treatment: the margin benchmark is treated as all-in, so the 5% Royalty Fee and 2% Development Fund are not subtracted again. Their comparability remains an uncertainty because the benchmark includes a broad limited-service population.
• Excluded from the published result: personal income taxes and financing principal payments. The public margin summary does not specify uniform treatment of interest or depreciation, so those items are not adjusted separately.

An owner who fully replaces a paid Designated Manager may create an additional labor benefit, but that is compensation for work—not passive business profit. Item 15 allows the owner not to supervise full time, provided an approved Designated Manager supervises the restaurant. That supports separate manager-run and owner-operator views.

The May 2025 national mean annual wage for Food Service Managers was $74,880, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. Adding that wage to the base manager-run residual produces an estimated owner-operator benefit of about $125,000 in Texas and $151,500 outside Texas.

Sales volume, labor, food cost, occupancy, and the 7% percentage-based franchise fee burden are the largest visible drivers. The FDD requires a 5% Royalty Fee and a 2% Development Fund contribution. At the regional median Gross Sales used in the base cases, 7% equals approximately $87,700 in Texas and $134,100 outside Texas before variable technology and vendor charges.

Those fee-dollar calculations are derived from the FDD and are shown for scale; they are not subtracted from the scenario margin a second time. The external 4.0% pre-tax margin is treated as an all-in proxy because the public benchmark summary does not provide a franchise-fee adjustment.

The sales evidence is current and same-brand, but the profit margin is not. Item 19 gives a strong regional revenue distribution for traditional franchised restaurants, yet it supplies no labor, food, occupancy, operating profit, EBITDA, Net Income, cash flow, or Owner Compensation data. The scenario therefore depends materially on a broad limited-service restaurant benchmark.

• Format gap: no owner-earnings estimate is published here for a Taqueria Restaurant or nontraditional restaurant because Item 19 excludes those formats.
• Cohort gap: Item 19 does not state outlet age, maturity threshold, remodel status, or a full reconciliation from the 105 franchised outlets in Item 20 to the 90 restaurants shown in Item 19.
• Accounting gap: the public benchmark summary does not establish uniform treatment of interest, depreciation, owner salary, or franchise-specific technology costs.
• Geographic gap: Texas sales are materially below rest-of-U.S. sales in the disclosed population, so a single national revenue figure would obscure a decision-relevant difference.
• Survivorship and closure context: Item 20 reports franchised outlets declining from 134 at the start of 2023 to 105 at the end of 2025, including 14 outlets that ceased operations for other reasons during 2025. Item 19 reports operating restaurants, not failed-store economics.

Request store-level evidence that converts Gross Sales into cash available to the owner. The FTC advises buyers to examine Item 19 limitations, ask for written substantiation, and compare the disclosure with current and former franchisee experience.

• Ask for Item 19 written substantiation and a reconciliation of the 90 reported restaurants to the 105 franchised outlets in Item 20.
• Obtain monthly profit-and-loss statements from several Texas and rest-of-U.S. traditional restaurants at comparable sales levels.
• Separate food and beverage cost, hourly labor, Designated Manager compensation, occupancy, utilities, repairs, insurance, merchant fees, technology charges, Royalty Fee, and Development Fund.
• Confirm whether reported profit includes interest, depreciation, owner salary, distributions, capital expenditures, and required remodel reserves.
• Interview owners who actively manage a restaurant and owners who employ a Designated Manager; compare hours worked with the claimed owner-operator benefit.
• Review closed and transferred outlets, not only current high-volume restaurants, and ask how first-year ramp-up differs from mature-store performance.
• Model debt separately using the buyer’s actual loan amount, rate, amortization, and required reserves. Item 10 says the franchisor and affiliates do not offer or guarantee financing.
• For multi-unit development, build a portfolio model that includes opening schedules, ramp-up losses, area management, shared overhead, and staggered debt rather than multiplying one mature unit’s earnings.