FDD teardown · Quick-service restaurants
Subway: what the 2026 FDD discloses
Franchisor of record: Doctor's Associates LLC · analyzed
The fee stack
Initial franchise fee (Item 5)
p. 29$15,000 (standard); $7,500 (reduced for additional franchises, affiliate franchisees, U.S. Veterans, qualified non-traditional locations); $5,000 (satellite); $1,000 (short-term satellite)
Initial investment (Item 7)
p. 51$263,000 – $630,000
Royalty (Item 6)
p. 368% of total gross sales
Ad fund (Item 6)
p. 364.5% of total gross sales
Plus 6 other notable ongoing fees disclosed in Item 6 — including transfer fee (50% of then-current franchise fee (currently $7,500), plus $3,000 for any satellite, p. 37). The full stack is in the paid report.
Earnings claims (Item 19)
No financial performance representation is made (p. 93).
Verbatim: “We do not make any representations about a franchisee's future financial performance or the past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets. We also do not authorize our employees or representatives to make any such representations either orally or in writing.”
Franchised outlets & turnover (Item 20, p. 94)
| Year | Start | End | Exits | Turnover* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 20,576 | 20,133 | 853 | 4.15% |
| 2024 | 20,133 | 19,502 | 1,005 | 4.99% |
| 2025 | 19,502 | 18,773 | 1,224 | 6.28% |
*Computed by FDDLens from the disclosed table: (terminations + non-renewals + reacquired + ceased-other) ÷ outlets at start of year. Not a figure the franchisor states.
Subway’s 2025 franchised-outlet turnover: 6.28%. Median across the 4 FDDs in our corpus: 3.92%. Both computed the same way from each filing’s Item 20 table.
Litigation (Item 3)
57 disclosed matters (p. 28). The FDD’s own characterization: “Other than the 47 actions and the 10 franchisor-initiated actions disclosed in Exhibit L, no other litigation is required to be disclosed in this Item. We estimate that the franchisees we or our affiliates filed actions against in connection with the franchise relationship during our 2025 fiscal year constitute about 0.03% of the franchisees operating Subway® restaurants globally.”
How this teardown was produced
Analysis of Subway's 2026 FDD as filed with the Minnesota Department of Commerce (CARDS); analyzed August 3, 2026. Our analysis of the franchisor's own disclosures, not the company's claim. Not legal or investment advice — bring it to a franchise attorney.
Every figure was extracted from the filed document and carries the PDF page it came from. Statistics — turnover rates, exit totals — are computed by us from the disclosed Item 20 table cells, never taken from anyone’s summary. FDDs are public records once filed with a state registry.