A manager-run Ziggi’s Coffee fixed-location unit may produce roughly $17,000 to $95,000 in estimated pre-tax owner earnings per year under the analytical scenarios below. An owner who personally performs the full-time General Manager role may receive an estimated owner-operator benefit of about $80,000 to $158,000, but that higher range includes compensation for the owner’s labor and is not passive business profit.
This range is an independent analytical scenario, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Ziggi’s Coffee Franchise, LLC. It combines 2025 sales disclosed in the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document with a separately identified U.S. government industry-margin proxy and explicit sensitivity assumptions. Actual results can differ materially because of location, unit format, transaction volume, discounts, labor, occupancy, financing, owner involvement, maintenance, local competition, and execution.
Legal franchisor: Ziggi’s Coffee Franchise, LLC. FDD: issued March 31, 2026. Item 19 status: official 2025 franchise Total Sales are disclosed for 55 Drive Thru outlets and 35 Café with Drive Thru outlets; franchisee operating profit, net income, cash flow, and owner compensation are not disclosed. The model uses the relevant 2025 median Total Sales, the Internal Revenue Service’s Tax Year 2022 “Food services and drinking places” corporate net-income ratio, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2024 industry wage for Food Service Managers. Checked July 19, 2026.
The revenue anchors come from same-brand Item 19 data. The owner-earnings figures do not.
The largest limitation is the use of a broad, older government margin proxy because Item 19 does not disclose franchise-level operating expenses or net profit.
What does Ziggi’s Coffee Item 19 actually report?
Item 19 officially reports sales for mature franchised outlets, not annual owner earnings. For calendar 2025, the disclosure gives average, median, high, and low Total Sales for the Drive Thru and Café with Drive Thru populations. It does not report franchisee rent, utilities, insurance, repairs, depreciation, interest, other overhead, net income, distributions, or owner compensation.
| 2025 franchised format | Included outlets | Average Total Sales | Median and disclosed range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drive Thru | 55 | $836,537 24 outlets / 44% met or exceeded it |
$793,853 $463,799–$1,490,573 |
| Café with Drive Thru | 35 | $836,010 22 outlets / 63% met or exceeded it |
$904,212 $262,985–$1,207,249 |
Source: 2026 Ziggi’s Coffee Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, Table C and Table D, p. 58; definitions and limitations, pp. 60–62. The franchisor states that franchisees reported the information and that it was not audited or otherwise verified by the franchisor.
The median is the stronger central revenue anchor here because the average can be moved by unusually high or low locations. Even the median remains a sales figure: a unit can generate substantial Total Sales and still have weak owner earnings after occupancy, labor pressure, maintenance, debt, and other expenses.
Does the higher café median imply higher owner earnings?
No. The higher median only indicates that the middle location in that reporting cohort recorded more annual receipts. It does not establish that the larger format retained a higher percentage of those receipts. A location with indoor seating can face a different lease structure, building size, utility profile, cleaning burden, repair schedule, and staffing pattern than a compact service-focused location. None of those cost relationships is quantified for franchised shops in the disclosure.
The comparison is also affected by the shape of each cohort. The two averages are almost identical, while the medians differ by more than $110,000. In the smaller-format cohort, fewer than half of the reporting locations met or exceeded the average, which is consistent with high performers pulling the mean upward. In the larger-format cohort, nearly two-thirds met or exceeded the average, and the median sits above the mean. This does not prove one format is financially superior; it shows why a single average can obscure the distribution.
A site-level decision therefore needs a matched operating model. Revenue should be compared with the expected building footprint, rent structure, operating hours, lane configuration, staffing plan, local wage market, and projected transaction mix. Without those inputs, the disclosed difference between the medians is evidence about sales distribution, not evidence about owner income.
Why are the affiliate “Adjusted Gross Profits” not owner earnings?
The affiliate tables provide a useful operating layer, but they stop well above net profit. For four affiliate Drive Thru shops, 2025 Adjusted Gross Profits ranged from $240,030 to $372,126. For two affiliate Café with Drive Thru shops, they ranged from $134,624 to $197,739. The term is defined narrowly and should not be renamed owner income.
- Total Sales
- Receipts excluding sales tax and including specified gift-card and loyalty redemptions.
- Actual Gross Sales
- Total Sales less discounts and complimentary employee products; this is the Item 19 basis for percentage fees.
- Gross Profits
- Actual Gross Sales minus cost of goods sold and labor costs.
- Adjusted Gross Profits
- Affiliate Gross Profits minus a hypothetical 6% Royalty. It still excludes occupancy and other operating and non-operating expenses, so it is not franchisee net income or owner take-home pay.
The aggregate Adjusted Gross Profits represented about 30.2% of Actual Gross Sales for the four affiliate Drive Thru shops and 21.7% for the two affiliate Café with Drive Thru shops. Those derived percentages describe only the FDD-defined intermediate measure. They are not used as the owner-earnings margin because the missing expense categories are material.
How is the annual owner-earnings range calculated?
The model applies transparent revenue and margin sensitivities to each format’s official 2025 median Total Sales. The Conservative, Base, and Upside cases are analytical scenarios, not probabilities, forecasts, or franchisor-reported outcomes.
- Revenue: 80%, 100%, and 120% of the relevant Item 19 median. The 80% and 120% spread is editorial because Item 19 provides no quartiles.
- Margin: 2.7%, 5.7%, and 8.7%. The Base case is the derived IRS Tax Year 2022 net-income-to-total-receipts ratio for corporate Food services and drinking places; the other cases are the required transparent sensitivity of minus or plus 3 percentage points.
- Fee treatment: Item 6 discloses a 6% Royalty and a current 1% Marketing and Technology Fee on Actual Gross Sales, plus fixed recurring service fees. These are not subtracted again from the IRS all-in margin proxy because doing so could double count operating deductions. The benchmark is not franchise-specific, so it may still misstate Ziggi’s actual fee burden.
- Rounding: calculations use full-precision inputs and are shown to the nearest $1,000 to avoid false precision.
| Scenario | Revenue assumption | Margin assumption | Manager-run estimate: Drive Thru / Café with Drive Thru |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 80% of format median | 2.7% | $17,000 / $20,000 |
| Base | 100% of format median | 5.7% | $45,000 / $52,000 |
| Upside | 120% of format median | 8.7% | $83,000 / $95,000 |
Estimated pre-tax residual before personal income taxes and financing principal, rounded to the nearest $1,000.
Interpretation: the scenario spread is driven by both sales and margin sensitivity. It should not be read as a prediction that a new unit will land at the Base case.
Sources: 2026 Ziggi’s Coffee Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, p. 58; IRS Corporation Income Tax Returns Complete Report, Tax Year 2022, Table 5.1. Calculations by FranchisesBiz.
What does “estimated pre-tax owner earnings” include?
For this analysis, the term means the modeled residual after normal business deductions and recurring franchise fees, before the owner’s personal income taxes and before financing principal payments. It is not after-tax take-home pay.
- Manager compensation
- The manager-run scenario assumes normal management payroll is reflected in the broad all-in industry margin. The IRS table does not isolate a Ziggi’s General Manager cost.
- Owner compensation
- The manager-run residual is before any owner salary, draw, or distribution. The owner-operator case separately adds a market labor value.
- Interest and depreciation
- These may be reflected in the aggregate IRS tax-return measure and cannot be cleanly separated. The estimate is therefore not EBITDA and not a pure store-level cash-flow measure.
- Capital expenditures
- Cash spending for equipment replacement or remodels is not separately modeled, except to the extent depreciation is embedded in the IRS aggregate.
- Debt service
- Financing principal is excluded. Interest treatment is not standardized because the external margin is an aggregate tax-return measure. Actual lender payments must be deducted separately from available cash.
- Personal taxes
- Excluded. Federal, state, and local tax outcomes depend on entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, and the owner’s circumstances.
How does owner involvement change the result?
Owner involvement can add the economic value of a full-time General Manager role, but it does not automatically improve underlying store profit. Item 15 permits the owner or Managing Owner to serve as General Manager; otherwise, another person must manage daily operations full time. Using the BLS May 2024 median wage of $63,040 for Food Service Managers in Food services and drinking places, the Base-case owner-operator benefit is about $108,000 for a Drive Thru and $115,000 for a Café with Drive Thru.
The $63,040 gap represents labor performed by the owner, not additional passive profit.
Interpretation: an owner-operator may retain the residual profit and avoid a market General Manager wage, but the added amount compensates full-time operational work, including early mornings, weekends, staffing, customer service, and administrative responsibilities.
Sources: 2026 Ziggi’s Coffee Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 15, p. 52; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook for Food Service Managers, May 2024 wage data. Calculations by FranchisesBiz.
The Conservative-to-Upside owner-operator benefit is approximately $80,000–$146,000 for a Drive Thru and $83,000–$158,000 for a Café with Drive Thru. These figures equal modeled manager-run owner earnings plus $63,040 of labor value. They do not imply that the business itself becomes more profitable by the same amount.
What could move actual Ziggi’s Coffee owner earnings outside the range?
Occupancy, labor efficiency, discounting, and financing are the largest unresolved variables because Item 19 does not disclose a franchisee operating statement. The official sales distribution is also wide, and a new location may not resemble the mature outlets in the annual tables.
Which limitations matter most?
The estimate is most sensitive to data compatibility, not arithmetic. Multiplication is simple; determining whether the benchmark reflects a Ziggi’s Coffee unit is the difficult part.
- Broad industry proxy: the IRS category includes many Food services and drinking places businesses, not only drive-thru coffee shops or franchises.
- Benchmark age: Tax Year 2022 is the latest complete corporate industry table available for this calculation as of July 19, 2026, but it predates the 2025 Ziggi’s sales period.
- Entity mismatch: corporate tax-return net income is not equivalent to a single-unit franchise operating statement, owner distribution, or cash flow.
- Format mismatch: the Census definition for NAICS 722515, Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars, is directionally relevant to fixed-location coffee shops but also includes other beverage and snack concepts.
- Cohort selection: Tables C and D cover outlets operating all or substantially all of 2025. Sixteen franchisee-owned outlets that began operating during 2025 were excluded, as was one café-only outlet.
- Mobile Unit gap: Mobile Unit franchises began being offered in 2026, and the FDD provides no historical Item 19 sales or earnings evidence for that format. The fixed-location range should not be applied to a Mobile Unit.
Why do modest margin changes matter so much?
At the disclosed median revenue levels, each one-percentage-point change in retained margin is worth approximately $7,900 to the smaller-format unit and $9,000 to the larger-format unit. This is a simple derived sensitivity: one percent of the applicable median revenue. A three-percentage-point change therefore moves annual residual earnings by roughly $24,000 to $27,000 before considering any simultaneous change in sales.
This sensitivity explains why the published range expands quickly. The low scenario combines lower revenue with a thinner margin, while the high scenario combines higher revenue with a wider margin. That construction is deliberately conservative about uncertainty; it is not a statement that sales and margins always move together. In practice, some costs are fixed, some are semi-variable, and some rise almost directly with transactions. A high-volume site may spread fixed rent and management overhead across more receipts, but it may also require more labor, maintenance, equipment capacity, and discounting.
Location-specific occupancy is especially important. A landlord-funded buildout may reduce initial cash outlay but appear later through higher rent. Property ownership may shift expense from rent to interest, taxes, repairs, and capital requirements. Neither arrangement can be evaluated from annual receipts alone. A buyer should model the proposed lease or real-estate structure over the same twelve-month period as payroll, insurance, utilities, repairs, recurring technology, and local marketing.
The same separation applies to financing and taxes. Loan principal reduces cash available to the owner but is not an operating expense. Personal income tax depends on the legal entity and the owner’s wider tax position. Mixing either item into a store margin without consistent definitions would make comparisons less reliable, not more precise.
How do the recurring fees affect interpretation?
The disclosed percentage fees create a meaningful fixed claim on sales before the owner receives any residual. Item 6 currently requires a 6% Royalty and a 1% Marketing and Technology Fee on Actual Gross Sales. It also lists the Loyalty & Gift Program Fee, Third Party & Online Ordering Fee, Location & Review Management Fee, Learning Management System License Fee, mystery-shopper charges, and a Digital Menu Screen Fee for Café with Drive Thru locations.
Local Advertising Expenditure and Regional Advertising Fee requirements are currently none, but the FDD reserves rights to impose future requirements within stated limits. A buyer should model the current contract terms and a higher-fee sensitivity rather than assuming the current 7% percentage burden remains unchanged throughout the franchise term.
Item 20 reported 107 franchised outlets at December 31, 2025, up from 93 one year earlier. The annual sales tables contain 90 fixed-location outlets, while 16 outlets opened during 2025 and two franchised outlets ceased operations. Full-year sales are useful, but they do not describe ramp-up economics or the specific circumstances of closed locations.
Sources: 2026 Ziggi’s Coffee Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 6, pp. 9–14; Item 19, pp. 58–62; Item 20, pp. 63–67. The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on evaluating franchise financial performance representations explains why gross sales, averages, company-operated results, geography, and written substantiation require careful review.
What should a prospective owner verify before relying on the estimate?
A buyer should replace every broad assumption with location-specific evidence before making an investment decision. The most useful checks are a franchisor-provided Item 19 substantiation package, franchisee operating statements with consistent definitions, and written estimates for the proposed site.
- Request written Item 19 substantiation. Confirm the source records for Tables C and D, the definition of “substantially the entire calendar year,” and whether any reporting outlets had unusual closures, remodels, or ownership changes.
- Interview Drive Thru and Café with Drive Thru owners separately. Ask for annual Actual Gross Sales, cost of goods sold, hourly labor, General Manager compensation, occupancy, utilities, repairs, insurance, technology, local marketing, and owner hours.
- Reconcile fees to Actual Gross Sales. Verify the 6% Royalty, current 1% Marketing and Technology Fee, fixed service charges, transaction fees, and any regional or local advertising obligation for the proposed market.
- Separate owner labor from business profit. Ask whether reported “income” includes owner wages, family labor, distributions, retained earnings, or reimbursements.
- Model financing outside operating earnings. Obtain actual loan amount, rate, amortization, fees, collateral requirements, and annual principal-and-interest schedule. Do not infer debt service from Item 7’s initial investment range.
- Compare full-year and ramp-up cohorts. Speak with recent openings as well as established operators and review former franchisee contacts listed in Item 20.
- Confirm format mapping. The official Ziggi’s Coffee U.S. franchise page currently describes café & drive-thru, double-sided drive-thru, and single-sided drive-thru models; confirm in writing which FDD Item 19 population best matches the proposed unit.
What is the most defensible Ziggi’s Coffee earnings takeaway?
The strongest defensible annual range is approximately $17,000–$95,000 in scenario-based, pre-tax owner earnings for a manager-run fixed-location unit. It is not an official Item 19 profit result. An active owner who replaces the required full-time General Manager may have an estimated owner-operator benefit of roughly $80,000–$158,000, including the value of labor performed.
The most important earnings driver is the combination of sales volume and the operating margin left after labor, occupancy, recurring franchise fees, and other overhead. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of a franchisee-level operating-profit or net-income disclosure. Before relying on any range, a buyer should verify the Item 19 substantiation, obtain comparable franchisee expense statements, and ask current and former franchisees to distinguish Total Sales, business profit, owner compensation, debt service, and personal taxes.