How Much Does a Goldfish Swim School Franchise Owner Make?

Item 19 reports revenue, ten operating-expense lines, and Profit Before Other Expenses for two franchised-school cohorts. The principal cohort contains 169 schools open at least 12 months; the second cohort isolates 17 schools in their first full calendar year. The figures are unaudited historical results for calendar 2025, not forecasts.

Source: Goldfish Swim School Franchising LLC, 2026 FDD, Item 19, printed pages 58-61; Item 20, printed pages 61-68.

The middle 50% spans $250,114 to $765,949 for the broad 12-month-plus cohort and $63,099 to $446,165 for first-full-year schools. These are official quartile observations for Profit Before Other Expenses, not Conservative, Base, and Upside projections.

The disclosed low was negative $197,689 in both cohorts. The disclosed high was $2,945,479 for the 169-school cohort and $1,091,452 for first-full-year schools. Those extremes demonstrate variation, but they are not a reasonable planning range by themselves. The 25th-to-75th percentile interval is more decision-useful because it avoids presenting the single highest school as an attainable benchmark.

For the 169-school cohort, average Total Revenue of $1,994,169 was reduced by $1,433,644 of disclosed operating expenses, leaving $560,524 of Profit Before Other Expenses. Payroll was the largest disclosed cost, followed by rent and occupancy. The bridge below groups compatible official line items and differs by $1 because the FDD table is rounded.

Total Revenue

Swim-lesson revenue plus birthday parties, vending, retail, registration, and other revenue. It is sales, not owner income.

Profit Before Other Expenses

The FDD's official residual after its listed operating expenses, including hourly and management labor, rent, royalty, national advertising fund, and local marketing.

Estimated pre-tax owner earnings

Cash available after normal operating expenses and recurring franchise fees, before personal income taxes and financing principal. The FDD does not directly disclose this complete measure.

Owner-operator benefit

Residual business profit plus the value of management labor performed by the owner. The labor component is compensation for work, not passive return.

Which recurring fees still matter when interpreting the profit measure?

Item 19 includes royalty, national advertising fund, and advertising-and-marketing expense rows, but it does not display a separate technology-fee row. Item 6 therefore remains necessary when converting the official profit measure into an owner-specific cash model.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, printed pages 8-12; Item 19, printed pages 59-61.

Owner involvement changes whether part of Profit Before Other Expenses represents business return or unpaid owner labor. The FDD requires direct, full-time, day-to-day supervision by an approved Designated Manager or on-site general manager. An ownermay fill that role, but an approved non-owner manager is also permitted for an entity-owned franchise.

The same distinction applies to salary, draws, and distributions. An owner can receive a W-2 salary, a draw, distributions, retained earnings, or some combination, depending on entity structure and tax planning. Those payment methods do not change the underlying unit economics. Personal income taxes are not estimated here because federal, state, local, entity, and owner-specific circumstances differ.

Source: 2026 FDD, Item 15, printed page 46; Item 19 footnotes, printed pages 60-61.

The largest uncertainty is the gap between the FDD's store-level profit measure and the owner's final cash result. Location sales, payroll efficiency, rent, utility use, manager structure, financing, and owner labor treatment can each move the answer substantially.

• Operating age: first-full-year median Profit Before Other Expenses was $181,072, compared with $475,014 for the broader 12-month-plus cohort.
• Sales dispersion: mature-cohort Total Revenue ranged from $528,953 to $6,383,493. The middle 50% was $1,389,965 to $2,415,642.
• Occupancy: the FDD states that rent and occupancy costs vary widely by market and can be affected by lease structure, affiliated landlords, free rent, and tenant-improvement allowances.
• Owner labor classification: owner compensation is excluded, while hourly and management labor is included. Mixed owner-operated and manager-run populations can therefore have different economic meanings at the same reported profit level.
• Below-the-line and cash-flow items: interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, any technology fee not already reflected in the source records, owner compensation, capital replacement, debt principal, and miscellaneous costs can reduce cash available to the owner.
• Financing: debt principal is not an operating expense and should be shown separately. Two owners with identical store economics can have very different cash flow after debt service.

How should debt service be treated?

Debt service should be deducted after operating earnings, not hidden inside the Item 19 profit measure. Interest is one of the “other expenses” excluded from Profit Before Other Expenses; principal repayment is a financing cash flow. Because the FDD does not provide a universal loan amount, interest rate, or term, this article does not impose one debt scenario on every buyer.

A buyer should reconcile the Item 19 profit measure to actual owner cash flow using written substantiation and franchisee interviews. The franchisor states that written substantiation of the financial performance representation will be available on reasonable request.

• Ask for the Item 19 substantiation and confirm whether each reporting school's chart of accounts treated technology fees, owner expenses, repairs, and miscellaneous costs consistently.
• Separate owner-operated schools from manager-run schools. For each interview, record owner hours, owner salary, manager payroll, distributions, and retained cash separately.
• Compare the target site's projected rent, common-area maintenance, real-estate taxes, utilities, and tenant-improvement economics with the Item 19 occupancy definition.
• Ask schools in the 13-to-24-month cohort how long enrollment, staffing, and local marketing took to stabilize; do not apply a mature median to a first-year budget without a ramp schedule.
• Rebuild cash flow below Profit Before Other Expenses and confirm where the technology fee was recorded; then add interest, maintenance capital expenditures, owner compensation, accounting and legal costs, debt principal, and other omitted cash requirements.
• Use Item 20 contacts to interview current and former franchisees and compare unit-level results, transfer history, owner workload, and financing structure.
• Confirm that any earnings statement received outside Item 19 is either actual records for an existing outlet or a properly supported supplemental financial performance representation.