Great Clips: what the 2026 FDD discloses

The franchisor’s own caveats, verbatim:

• “Neither Great Clips nor its independent certified public accountants have independently audited or verified the financial information contained in the POS System.”
• “Neither Great Clips nor its independent certified public accountants have independently audited or verified these franchisee statements.”
• “Sales, expenses and cash flow results depend upon many independently variable factors including, but by no means limited to, the location and visibility of the salon, local traffic patterns, the demographic composition, age of the market and trends of the market area served by the salon, the competitive environment, public awareness of and goodwill associated with the name GREAT CLIPS®, the region and market area in which the salon is located, the length of time the salon has been in operation, the quality of the management and service at the salon, labor costs, the individual skills of the franchisee and other factors.”
• “To be considered a 2025 Salon, the salon must have been eligible to be open (as defined below) during the entire time period from January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 (the "2025 Period").”
• “Of the 2025 Salons, the lowest amount in Total Sales at any salon was $28,036.”
• “2025 Salons that provided Great Clips with no or insufficient data to be reasonably assured of having accurate and complete expense information were excluded (the "Non-Reporting 2025 Salons"). The number of Non-Reporting 2025 Salons is 1,782.”
• “The Non-Reporting 2025 Salons were not distributed evenly over the entire dataset, based on total sales. Of the Non-Reporting 2025 Salons, 763 had total sales at or above the median of the Reporting 2025 Salons, and 1,019 had total sales below the median of the Reporting 2025 Salons.”
• “The time frame or accounting period of these financial statements was the most current available to Great Clips, but, in some cases, did not match the exact time frame from which sales figures were drawn. Therefore, some information was annualized to extract a full year's worth of data.”
• “Operating Cash Flow does not include any provision for income taxes or for non-cash expenses such as depreciation or amortization. It also does not include any reserve for future capital expenditures.”
• “Although it does not include any provision for income taxes, Operating Cash Flow is reduced by the amount of Total Expenses incurred, which includes employer payroll taxes (as a component of labor expenses); beginning in 2025, however, employers operating in industries where tipping is customary (including hair salons) may be eligible under federal law for a tax credit equal to the employer's share of payroll taxes paid on a portion of employee-reported tips.”
• “Some salons have sold and earned this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance that you will sell or earn as much.”
• “Newly opened GREAT CLIPS® salons tend to have average sales and cash flows significantly below the average for the salons included in Tables 1, 2 and 3 above. This is especially true of new GREAT CLIPS® salons opened by new franchisees in markets that have few existing salons.”
• “Markets with many GREAT CLIPS® salons and correspondingly larger cooperative advertising budgets tend to have salons with higher sales and cash flows than markets with few existing salons.”