This is the strongest official reference range for a U.S. Zaxby’s restaurant, but it is not owner take-home pay. The 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document reports median 4 Wall EBITDA of $138,808 for the bottom sales quartile and $773,586 for the top sales quartile during fiscal 2025. The measure is before officer salaries, interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, debt payments, and replacement equipment or other capital spending.
Any translation of 4 Wall EBITDA into “owner earnings,” including the Conservative, Base, and Upside owner-role allocations below, is an independent analytical scenario. It is not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Zaxby’s SPE Franchisor LLC. The analysis combines identified FDD facts with a separately identified U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage benchmark and explicit assumptions. Actual results can differ materially because of location, restaurant format, sales, food cost, labor, occupancy, financing, owner involvement, capital spending, and execution.
- Legal franchisor
- Zaxby’s SPE Franchisor LLC
- Current disclosure
- 2026 Zaxbys Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 24, 2026; Item 19, pp. 52–56; Item 20, pp. 57–62
- Item 19 population
- 563 franchised restaurants with submitted financials in Table 2; 809 franchised restaurants in the fiscal 2025 Gross Revenues table
- Outside benchmark
- May 2025 national mean wage for Food Service Managers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS table
- Date checked
- July 20, 2026
Bottom-quartile median 4 Wall EBITDA
Fiscal 2025 median for 141 Table 2 restaurants in the lowest Gross Revenues quartile.
Weighted average 4 Wall EBITDA
Calculated from all four reported quartile averages and restaurant counts.
Top-quartile median 4 Wall EBITDA
Fiscal 2025 median for 140 Table 2 restaurants in the highest Gross Revenues quartile.
Weighted average Gross Revenues
$2,895,127 across the 563 reporting restaurants; revenue is not owner earnings.
Table 2 share of franchised restaurants
563 reporting units divided by 865 franchised restaurants at fiscal year-end 2025.
What does the 2026 Zaxbys FDD actually measure?
Officially, Item 19 measures Gross Revenues, selected operating costs, 4 Wall EBITDAR, location expense, and 4 Wall EBITDA for franchised restaurants during fiscal 2025. It does not report an owner salary, owner draw, distributions, retained earnings, debt-adjusted cash flow, or after-tax take-home pay.
- Gross Revenues
- Restaurant revenue before the operating expense deductions shown in Table 2. It is not income to the owner.
- 4 Wall EBITDAR
- Gross Revenues after cost of goods sold, labor, royalties, advertising, and other operating expenses, but before the source-defined location expense.
- 4 Wall EBITDA
- 4 Wall EBITDAR after location expense. Item 19 defines EBITDA as excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
- Owner earnings
- Not directly disclosed. The FDD also says labor excludes officer salaries, while debt payments, interest expense, and additional or replacement equipment are outside Table 2.
The 809-restaurant Gross Revenues table has an average of $2,847,345 and a median of $2,783,862, but neither number answers what an owner keeps. The more decision-useful evidence is the operating-cost table’s reported EBITDA, read with its exclusions and sample limitations.
The Federal Trade Commission’s franchise buyer guide explains that Item 19 claims must have a reasonable basis and should disclose their sources, assumptions, and limitations. Prospective buyers may request written substantiation for the financial performance representation.
How much did reporting Zaxbys restaurants produce by sales quartile?
Official fiscal 2025 median 4 Wall EBITDA rose from $138,808 in the bottom sales quartile to $773,586 in the top quartile. These are quartile medians for the 563 reporting restaurants, not minimum and maximum owner outcomes.
| Sales quartile | Restaurants | Average Gross Revenues | Median 4 Wall EBITDA | Average EBITDA margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom quartile | 141 | $1,891,062 | $138,808 | 7.5% |
| Third quartile | 141 | $2,557,665 | $345,469 | 13.6% |
| Second quartile | 141 | $3,094,238 | $526,552 | 17.2% |
| Top quartile | 140 | $4,045,705 | $773,586 | 20.2% |
Average 4 Wall EBITDA as a percentage of average Gross Revenues, fiscal 2025.
Interpretation: The average 4 Wall EBITDA margin expands by 12.7 percentage points from the bottom to the top sales quartile. Item 19 shows lower labor and location expense percentages at higher sales levels, indicating substantial operating leverage.
Source: 2026 Zaxbys Franchise Disclosure Document, operating-cost table in Item 19, pp. 53–55.
What is a reasonable annual owner-earnings range?
A reasonable pre-debt owner-benefit proxy is approximately $138,808 to $773,586, with a derived central anchor of $459,565. The Conservative and Upside anchors are official quartile medians; the Base anchor is a weighted average derived from the 563 reporting restaurants. None is a forecast probability or a guaranteed result.
Illustrative allocation of each operating EBITDA anchor using the May 2025 BLS national mean annual wage of $74,880 for Food Service Managers.
Interpretation: At the Conservative anchor, valuing full-time management labor at $74,880 leaves about $63,928 as illustrative residual business profit. The corresponding residuals are about $384,685 at Base and $698,706 at Upside. This allocation is not an additional deduction for units whose manager compensation is already included in labor.
Sources and method: Conservative and Upside use official Item 19 quartile medians; Base is derived from the same FDD table. The labor segment uses the May 2025 BLS annual mean wage. The BLS figure is wage-only and does not include employer payroll taxes or benefits.
The range is not a floor and ceiling. The disclosure does not provide the lowest or highest EBITDA among the 563 restaurants, and actual owner cash flow can fall below zero after debt service, required reinvestment, unusual repairs, owner compensation, or weak sales. The FDD also says franchisee data were not independently verified and may not be allocated uniformly.
How does active versus manager-run ownership change the result?
Owner involvement changes the composition of the economics more clearly than it changes the official reported number. The FDD permits a Designated Principal not to supervise the restaurant personally day to day, but every open restaurant must have on-premises Certified Manager supervision and a required management bench. The labor line excludes officer salaries, so an active owner-officer’s work may sit inside reported EBITDA rather than appearing as labor expense.
- Manager-run unit: A non-owner general manager’s compensation should ordinarily be recorded in labor. In that case, reported EBITDA is closer to residual operating profit before debt service, capital spending, and taxes.
- Owner-operator unit: If an owner-officer performs the general manager role and the officer salary is excluded from labor, part of the reported amount compensates the owner for full-time work. The chart allocates $74,880 as wage-only labor value rather than treating the full amount as passive profit.
- Multi-unit owner: Item 15 requires a full-time Key Operator for restaurants in the same geographic area and Certified Managers at each restaurant. One-unit EBITDA should not be multiplied across a portfolio without shared overhead, management structure, development timing, and maturity adjustments.
Active operation may reduce the need for a separately paid general manager, but the saved payroll is compensation for the owner’s labor, not automatically additional passive business profit. Conversely, a manager-run model can preserve owner time while reducing residual cash through management payroll and employer burden.
For the operating rules, see the 2026 Zaxbys Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 15, pp. 45–46. The brand’s official U.S. franchise opportunity site also describes the current ownership process, while the FDD controls the contractual operating obligations.
Which fees and costs are already inside 4 Wall EBITDA?
Royalty, advertising, technology-related costs, ordinary labor, cost of goods sold, other operating expenses, and location expense are already reflected in the official operating-cost calculation. They should not be subtracted a second time when interpreting the reported EBITDA.
| Cost or obligation | Treatment in this analysis | FDD evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty | Already included in reported operating expenses; standard contract rate is 6% of Gross Sales, subject to disclosed incentive programs. | Item 6, pp. 11–12; Item 19, pp. 53–55 |
| Weekly marketing contributions | Already included in reported advertising expense; contractual weekly contribution is up to 4% of Gross Sales. | Item 6, pp. 11–12; Item 19, pp. 53–55 |
| Technology Services Fee | Included within the source-defined “Other Operating Expenses”; current fee is $0.06 per transaction, subject to the FDD terms. | Item 6, pp. 12–17; Item 19, p. 55 |
| Owner or officer salary | Not included when captured as an officer salary; this is the central owner-role uncertainty. | Item 19, p. 55 |
| Debt, interest, capital replacements, personal taxes | Outside the owner-benefit proxy and must be modeled separately for the buyer’s financing, assets, and tax position. | Item 19, pp. 54–55; Item 7 used only as initial-investment context |
The FDD does not offer financing and does not provide standardized loan terms. For that reason, this article does not deduct a hypothetical loan payment. A buyer should take the selected restaurant’s financed amount, interest rate, amortization term, and required reserves and subtract annual debt service separately from the operating result.
How representative is the earnings evidence?
The evidence is broad enough for a High confidence label on the official 4 Wall EBITDA measure, but not on personal take-home pay. The operating-cost population covers 563 restaurants, or 65.1% of the 865 franchised restaurants open at fiscal year-end 2025, while the separate sales table covers 809 restaurants, or 93.5%.
The sales disclosure excludes affiliate-operated restaurants from the franchised sales population and excludes newly opened, closed, and materially interrupted restaurants from its measured population. Item 20 reports that the franchised system grew from 826 to 865 restaurants during 2025, including 41 openings. These cohort rules matter because mature, continuously operating restaurants are not the same population as new units in ramp-up.
- Ask for written financial-performance substantiation and confirm whether your target market resembles the Table 2 population.
- Ask existing franchisees whether officer salaries, general manager wages, related-party rent, and delivery costs are classified consistently.
- Request restaurant-level profit-and-loss statements for any resale under consideration; the FTC permits actual records for an existing outlet.
- Model debt service, maintenance capital expenditures, equipment replacement, remodel obligations, and working-capital reserves outside 4 Wall EBITDA.
- Separate owner salary, distributions, and retained cash when comparing owner-operated and manager-run structures.
- Check current royalty incentives and marketing assessments against the signed Franchise Agreement rather than assuming every restaurant pays the same effective percentage.
The FTC’s guidance on scrutinizing financial performance representations recommends testing whether the data are typical, geographically relevant, and supported by written substantiation.
The strongest defensible annual range is approximately $139,000 to $774,000 in official median operating EBITDA across Zaxbys sales quartiles, with a derived central anchor of about $460,000. Treat that as a pre-owner-compensation, pre-debt, pre-capital-spending operating benefit proxy—not as guaranteed take-home pay. The most important earnings driver is sales volume because labor and location expenses consume a larger revenue share in the lower quartiles. The largest unresolved uncertainty is how each reporting restaurant classified owner-officer labor and management compensation. Before relying on the range, verify Item 19 substantiation, restaurant-level expense classifications, financing obligations, required reinvestment, and current and former franchisee experience.