Franchise Performance Benchmarks: A Breakdown of 330 Brands

The numbers are hard to ignore.

Franchise performance benchmarks from 26,000 franchise owners representing 330 brands show the highest-performing franchise systems aren’t just slightly better than the rest. In critical operational areas, they outperform lower-ranked brands by 67% to 100% on franchise performance benchmarks.

These findings come from Franchise Business Review’s annual Franchisee Satisfaction Study—the research behind the 2026 Top 200 Franchises list and Franchisee Satisfaction Awards.

And while the data is quantitative, the implications for franchise leaders are deeply strategic: Satisfaction is key to sustainable growth.

Key Franchise Performance Benchmarks

Of the 26,000 franchisees surveyed: 

• 82% of franchisees say they enjoy operating their business
• 85% enjoy being part of their franchise organization
• 86% would recommend their franchise to others
• 78% respect their franchisor and 76% trust them

These aren’t “feel good” metrics. They correlate directly with operational performance. In fact, owner satisfaction among the Top 200 Franchises averages 30% higher than other brands.

Where Most Brands Struggle: The Lowest-Rated Areas 

Before looking at what separates top performers, it’s important to understand where dissatisfaction most commonly appears.

Across systems, the lowest-rated areas among franchisees include:

• Marketing & Promotional Programs
• Innovation
• Effective Use of Technology
• Overall Financial Picture
• Senior Management Involves Franchisees

When FBR compared the top quartile (75 highest-scoring companies) to the bottom quartile (75 lowest-scoring companies), the performance gaps were dramatic.

Top Drivers of Franchise Performance

In other words: where most brands struggle is exactly where the top brands excel.

Even more telling is that among the top 200 brands, the 50 “best of the best” have satisfaction levels 40%-55% higher than the other top franchise award winners. 

The Three Franchise Performance Benchmarks That Really Matter

While there are six drivers that clearly separate the best brands from the competition, there are three areas that consistently predict performance outcomes. 

1. “My franchisor cares about my success”
2. “My total investment has been consistent with my expectations.”
   
3. “I trust/respect my franchisor.”

Scores on these three statements have the strongest correlation to, “Would you recommend this franchise to others?”

Trust Is a Leading Indicator, Not a Lagging One

If there’s one variable that predicts franchise growth more reliably than any other in FBR’s franchise performance benchmarks, it’s trust. 

Franchisees from the 50 brands ranked highest for franchisee satisfaction are more than twice as likely to trust their franchisor—and nearly three times as likely to recommend their franchise to others.

When FBR analyzed FDD data alongside satisfaction scores, a clear pattern emerges: franchisors whose franchisees rate trust highest are also the franchisors who are growing. Trust isn’t a soft metric— it’s a leading indicator of system health.

Building Trust in the Field

Building trust at scale isn’t an accident. For Culver’s, it starts with senior leadership showing up in person. 

Dale Ballweg, VP of Franchise Relations, described a deliberate shift in leadership behavior that’s been very well received by franchisees. In all, 11 members of the senior leadership team, as well as 30 additional team members, spent a full day working alongside franchisees in their restaurants. Beyond that, all 100+ support center team members each completed a minimum three-hour shift at a franchise location.

Ballweg explained, “We have over 100 team members that work for Culver Support Center. And in 2025, each one of them spent a minimum of three hours working either a lunch or dinner shift in a franchisee’s restaurant. The idea was to help strengthen their relationships with the franchisees.”

The logic is straightforward. When every person at the corporate level has stood inside a franchisee’s operation—handled the lunch rush, worked the counter, felt the real-world friction of running the business—they develop a fundamentally different relationship to the work they do in support roles. Franchisees feel it and the scores reflect it.

Culver’s also took a more direct approach to its largest franchise groups. In 2025, the CEO, COO, and other senior leaders traveled to visit the six largest franchise groups—representing roughly 25% of the total system—in their offices with agendas set by the franchisees themselves.

“They visited them in their space, at their offices, kind of with an open agenda, and really to talk about whatever it is the franchisees wanted to talk about. These were very successful visits, appreciated by the franchisees,” said Ballweg.

Culture As a Core Operating Principle 

For Right at Home, trust is built into the cultural architecture of the organization from day one. CEO Margaret Haynes describes it as a core operating principle, not a program.

“As a corporate team member coming in, we all understand that we exist to support the franchisees. And the reason we get up every morning is to help them build a sustainable, profitable business. We talk about that from the beginning when someone’s joining our team,” said Haynes.

Right at Home runs weekly “Takeoff Tuesday” Zoom calls—primarily franchisee-led best practice sharing—and holds quarterly open Q&A sessions with senior leadership where franchisees can ask anything. The emphasis is on access and transparency, not on polished corporate messaging.

Payroll Vault takes a similarly direct approach. CEO Tricia Petteys describes a philosophy of radical accessibility, particularly for new franchisees.

“They have access to our entire team, they have access to me. When they’re new, they can just send us a team note, call us on our cell phones, email us… I don’t like to hear ‘I didn’t want to bother you’—that’s our job. My job is to make sure that you’re successful,” explained Petteys.

Building a system of happy, high-performing franchisees doesn’t happen in a silo. It’s the result of a team that learns together, challenges each other, and brings out the best ideas in each other. So bring your team to the FBR Summit, October 28-30, in Austin, Texas, for the only event designed specifically for operations leaders and their teams that directly support franchisees. See the full agenda and register here.

Using Franchisee Performance Benchmarks As a Relationship Tool

One of the clearest differentiators between high-performing franchise systems and average ones is how they use franchisee satisfaction data. For most franchisors, a survey is something that happens once a year and produces a report that gets filed. For the brands at the top of FBR’s franchise performance benchmarks, it’s a living instrument for relationship management and strategic planning.

All three of the leaders we spoke to described the same essential best practices: 

• Reading every open-text verbatim comment as a leadership team
• Distilling them into a handful of themes, bringing those themes back to the franchise advisory council for validation
• And then making those priorities visible to the entire system.

Operationalizing Franchisee Feedback

Right at Home encourages franchisees to put their names on survey responses—not to eliminate anonymity, but to enable direct follow-up. Every named comment gets a personal response. The satisfaction data then feeds directly into the strategic agenda of the organization’s leadership council.

“We scour that information when it comes back, go through all the verbatim comments—and we encourage franchise owners to put their name on it,” said Haynes. “If anyone puts their name on that and has comments we can follow up on, we do that. And then we also share the results with the entire network and use the results with our strategic leadership council to help feed our initiatives and our strategies.”

Culver’s uses their FBR survey data to steer their annual planning. Ballweg explains, “The timing of the franchisee survey is perfect. We get results in early September and our annual planning meeting for our leadership team is in mid-late September. We read through every one of the comments shared by our owners and narrow down the top three areas for improvement. Those become the following year’s priorities,” explained Ballweg.

Read more about how Culver’s uses FBR survey data for annual business planning. 

Marketing Support: Low Score, High Stakes

Marketing and promotional programs is the lowest-scoring area in FBR’s franchise performance benchmarks—and also where top brands most dramatically outperform their peers. Brands in the top quartile outperform those in the bottom quartile by 100%. What they share isn’t necessarily a bigger ad budget—it’s a more thoughtful delivery model.

Right at Home has structured its marketing support around dedicated online marketing specialists—staff members who are each assigned to a group of franchisees and who take responsibility for making the local franchisee’s digital presence reflect what’s happening in their market.

Haynes explained, “The online marketing specialists build relationships with those local franchise owners, and they’re there to say, ‘Tell me what you’re doing in your local market, and I’ll bring it to life for you online.’ We try to take some of that marketing magic—many of our owners aren’t marketing experts—and bring them the experts to help with that, so they can focus on building relationships and doing things in their local community to grow their business.”

Brands seeing the greatest buy-in to marketing and promotional programs invest time in explaining campaign objectives, sharing performance data transparently, and tying marketing spend directly to measurable outcomes. When franchisees understand the strategy behind marketing decisions—and see transparency in results—satisfaction increases significantly.

Communication: The Quiet Multiplier

Tim Conn, President of Image One, notes that you can’t assume franchisees know where your efforts are going. They match, dollar for dollar, the marketing fund fees that their franchisees contribute. 

“We’ve always done that,” says Conn, “but we started communicating it a lot more regularly in recent years.” 

In addition, they always trial marketing strategies or new programs with corporate dollars—before putting franchisee dollars behind them. 

“If it’s something new, that I’m not sure will work quite yet, we pay for that,” shares Conn. “If it works well in the pilot programs, that’s when we may roll it out for everyone and have them start paying for it—but I want to ensure it works first!”

Read more about how Image One used trust-building techniques and communication strategies to raise financial and fee satisfaction scores by 15% in four years.

The Strategic Takeaway for Franchise Leaders

In a year when 43 new brands earned a spot on FBR’s Top 200 awards list and 43 fell off, the margin between good enough and consistently excellent is smaller than most franchisors realize. 

The brands that hold their positions year after year aren’t the ones with the best product or the lowest royalty rates. They’re the ones that have earned the trust of their franchisees by making franchisee success the organizing principle of everything they do.

For franchise leaders, the takeaway isn’t just to measure satisfaction. It’s to treat it as a strategic KPI—one that directly influences the key drivers of overall system success and sustainable growth.

The Only Event Designed Just for Franchise Operations & HR Teams

How can you make an immediate and lasting impact on your franchisees’ success? Find out at the FBR Summit, October 28-30 in Austin, TX. The Summit is an intensive, franchise industry event created just for operations leaders and their teams that directly support franchisees. Don’t miss it!

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Related Resource: Webinar

Hear more from these franchise leaders as they share more of their best practices for achieving higher satisfaction, stronger retention, and sustainable growth. We break down what these high-performing brands do differently—and how you can implement the same proven drivers inside your own system.

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