How Much Does a Woodcraft Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 measures store revenue, merchandise cost, and Gross Profit—not annual owner earnings. For 53 franchisee-owned stores operating throughout 2025, average Gross Revenues were $1,848,662 and average Gross Profit was $704,041. Operating costs still had to be deducted.

The FDD defines Gross Profit as Gross Revenues minus Cost of Goods Sold. Its Cost of Goods Sold measure is the invoice cost of products purchased from vendors. Item 19 expressly states that it omits operating expenses and other costs needed to determine net income or net profit. Revenue therefore cannot be treated as an owner salary, draw, distribution, or take-home amount.

The all-store median was $1,757,317 in Gross Revenues and $677,783 in Gross Profit, while the disclosed Gross Revenues range was $1,082,681 to $3,692,967. Those median figures are separate statistics and should not be combined into a synthetic median-store margin; the scenario model uses compatible average revenue, average Cost of Goods Sold, and average Gross Profit figures that reconcile arithmetically.

FDD source: 2026 Woodcraft Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, pp. 30–32; Item 20, pp. 32–38. The FDD says written substantiation for its financial performance representation is available to prospective franchisees upon reasonable request.

The estimate deducts a retail operating-expense proxy and Woodcraft’s recurring obligations from the exact Item 19 Gross Profit figures. The model applies to mature, full-year U.S. retail stores; all resulting earnings figures are independent estimates, not reported franchisor results.

• Revenue and Gross Profit: exact Item 19 average figures for the bottom half, all stores, and top half—not invented revenue percentages.
• Royalty: 5% of Gross Revenues in every scenario.
• Marketing Fund: 1.5% of Gross Revenues, reflecting the Year 3-and-later rate. Years 1 and 2 are disclosed at 1%.
• Local Advertising: 4.5% at the conservative revenue, 3.75% at the base revenue, and the disclosed $75,000 minimum above $2 million for the upside scenario.
• Retail System Support: annualized at $15,240, $9,750, and $4,260 across the scenarios, using the disclosed $355–$1,270 monthly range.
• Operating-cost sensitivity: the official NAICS 4441 non-advertising operating-expense ratio is 22.73%; the conservative and upside cases apply plus or minus 3 percentage points because no same-brand operating-expense distribution is disclosed.

In the base scenario, approximately $1.145 million goes to Cost of Goods Sold and about $619,000 goes to modeled operating costs and recurring obligations, leaving about $85,000. This is a derived annual bridge for the average 2025 reporting store, not an official Woodcraft operating-profit statement.

Replacing a paid retail manager adds an estimated $58,000 of annual labor value in this model. That produces owner-operator benefits of about $57,000, $143,000, and $245,000 across the three scenarios, but the added amount is compensation for work performed—not passive profit.

Item 15 states that either the owner or a general manager must directly supervise the Woodcraft Retail Store. Even when a general manager is employed, the franchisee remains obligated to oversee operations. A manager-run Woodcraft store therefore should not be interpreted as a fully passive investment.

For decision-making, keep the two components separate: residual business earnings compensate invested capital and operating risk, while owner labor value compensates time, supervision, selling, staffing, and store management. Distributions or draws may differ from either measure because cash can be retained for inventory, workingcapital, repairs, and other needs.

Confidence is limited because the FDD provides a strong same-brand Gross Profit anchor but no same-brand operating-expense or owner-income disclosure. The $0–$187,000 manager-run range is scenario-based for mature U.S. retail stores; it is not a prediction, probability interval, or claim that all stores will remain inside those endpoints.

The Item 19 sample is broad among year-end franchised stores—53 of 54 submitted the included financial data—but the population excludes one nonreporting store, two franchisee-owned stores that closed during 2025, two stores acquired by the affiliate during 2025, and every affiliate-owned store. Item 20 also shows franchised outlet count declining from 64 at year-end 2023 to 54 at year-end 2025. Those facts do not establish the reason for any individual closure or acquisition, but they make excluded-outlet economics a material diligence question.

A three-percentage-point change in the base store’s non-advertising operating-cost ratio changes annual earnings by approximately $55,000. Store rent, staffing intensity, wage rates, shrink, insurance, credit-card costs, inventory carrying costs, and local promotional spending can therefore move the estimate more than small changes in the support fee.

• Interest and debt principal: excluded. The Census operating-expense definition excludes interest, and the FDD does not provide standardized third-party financing terms. Debt service must be modeled separately for the buyer’s actual loan.
• Depreciation: included inside the Census operating-expense proxy; actual replacement capital expenditures are not separately modeled.
• Personal income taxes: excluded. Entity type, state, deductions, and owner circumstances determine after-tax outcomes.
• Owner compensation: no separate salary or draw is deducted in the manager-run result. The owner-operator result adds labor value explicitly rather than relabeling it as business profit.
• Years 1–2: not modeled as a mature steady state. Early ramp-up, initial local advertising rules, inventory build, hiring, and working-capital needs can produce materially different cash flow.
• Upper revenue bracket: the upside scenario uses the $75,000 minimum Local Advertising requirement for revenue above $2 million; actual spending could be higher.

A buyer should verify complete store-level profit-and-loss statements, owner hours, manager payroll, occupancy, and actual recurring fees with Woodcraft’s written substantiation and franchisee interviews. This verification should match the same U.S. retail format and a comparable store age, market size, and sales level.

• Request the written substantiation supporting the 2026 Item 19 figures and reconcile Gross Revenues, Cost of Goods Sold, and Gross Profit to the definitions used in the FDD.
• Ask several current and former franchisees for labor expense, manager compensation, payroll burden, rent, common-area charges, utilities, insurance, shrink, merchant fees, and depreciation as percentages of sales.
• Separate owner salary, draws, distributions, retained earnings, and business profit. Ask how many hours the owner works and which paid role the owner replaces.
• Identify why the 2025 closed and affiliate-acquired stores were excluded from Item 19 and whether their economics differed from the reporting cohort.
• Confirm the store’s actual Local Advertising bracket, Marketing Fund rate, Retail System Support configuration, gift-card charges, and any required program costs.
• Model lender-specific interest and principal payments separately, then test whether inventory and working-capital requirements leave enough cash for distributions.
• Compare the proposed site’s rent, wage market, competitive set, and expected merchandise mix with stores near the Item 19 revenue cohort being used.

The Federal Trade Commission’s guide to buying a franchise explains why Item 19 and its written substantiation are central to evaluating financial performance claims. The official Woodcraft U.S. franchise opportunity page identifies the current offer, while the official Woodcraft franchise program overview and official franchise support description provide operating-format context.

The strongest defensible annual range is roughly $0–$187,000 in estimated pre-tax manager-run owner earnings, with a base result near $85,000. An owner who personally replaces a paid store manager may realize about $57,000–$245,000 in owner-operator benefit, with a base near $143,000, but approximately $58,000 of each owner-operated result is labor value.

The figures are scenario-based, not official owner-income results. The most important driver is the store’s operating-cost structure—especially labor and occupancy—after the FDD-disclosed merchandise margin. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand operating-expense data for the Item 19 cohort, including the excluded closed and acquired stores. A buyer should reconcile Item 19 substantiation to full franchisee profit-and-loss statements and test manager-run versus owner-operated economics before treating any range as personally applicable.