Franchise Growth Benchmarks: What 460+ Brands' Real Data Shows for 2025

Most franchisors have no reliable way to know whether their conversion rate, franchisee engagement, or new-unit opening pace is actually good — only whether it feels better or worse than last quarter. The FranConnect Franchise Sales Index closes that gap. It’s an annual benchmark built from three full years (2023-2025) of anonymized, opted-in operational data across 460+ franchise brands on the FranConnect platform — 3.4 million leads, 33,000+ signed agreements, and 178,000+ locations across Enterprise, Mid-Market, and SMB segments in eight verticals. This isn’t survey data or self-reported estimates; it’s behavioral data pulled directly from platform activity, which is why the patterns below hold up year over year instead of shifting with whatever brands happened to respond to a survey that quarter.

Three findings define the 2025 edition, and each one has a direct, practical implication for how a development team should be operating heading into 2026.

1. The Conversion Shift — lead-to-agreement conversion roughly doubled. Total leads across the dataset grew just 7% from 2023 to 2025, while conversion rose from 0.76% to 1.50%. Brands stopped trying to outspend each other on lead generation and started getting more out of the leads they already had — faster follow-up, sharper qualification, and a better candidate experience from first contact through signed agreement.
2. The Engagement Multiplier — the gap between high- and low-engagement brands is widening, not narrowing. High-engagement brands produced 1.9x the net unit growth of low-engagement brands in 2025, up from 1.2x in 2024. The multiple briefly narrowed in 2024 because market conditions were strong enough that low-engagement brands could coast on momentum. In 2025, conditions were less forgiving, and the brands that hadn’t invested in franchisee engagement felt it directly in their growth numbers.
3. The SBNO Pipeline — 8,379 units enter 2026 already sold but not opened. SBNO (Sold But Not Opened) refers to units where a franchise agreement is signed but the location hasn’t opened yet. How a brand manages that pipeline — buildout support, training, field presence — determines how much of it actually converts into open, revenue-generating locations versus units that stall indefinitely.

Not every vertical converts at the same rate, and understanding where a brand sits relative to its own vertical’s benchmark—not just the blended industry average—is the useful starting comparison.

QSR converts 6.4x faster than full-service restaurants. Personal Services converts 2.6x faster than Business Services. Consumer demand, capital accessibility, and the depth of the available operator pool all shape these differences—a Business Services brand shouldn’t benchmark itself against QSR’s conversion rate, but it should absolutely track its own trend over time against its own vertical.

Across the dataset, the single most common reason a lead doesn’t convert isn’t active rejection — it’s unresponsiveness (the lead stops responding or is never successfully reached), ahead of “not interested,” financial disqualification, territory unavailability, and bad contact information, in that order. The encouraging trend: no-response losses fell 30% from 2023 to 2025, meaning the brands improving conversion are doing it primarily by closing the speed-to-lead gap, not by lowering their standards for who they pursue.

Internet0.9%Franchise Website0.6%

*Internal Network = existing franchisees, referrals, and development team prospecting.

Referrals from existing franchisees convert at 21x the rate of internet leads. This isn’t a coincidence — franchisees who are well-supported and consistently meeting brand standards are more likely to refer quality candidates and represent the brand well in their own markets. The same operational investment that drives day-to-day performance is what shapes the quality of a brand’s referral pipeline, which is why engagement and conversion aren’t really two separate problems.

The Engagement Multiplier isn’t a soft or subjective score — it’s a composite built from four measurable, operational signals, tracked consistently by the top-quartile brands in the dataset:

1. Field visits — regular, scheduled touchpoints between a brand’s support team and its franchisees.
2. Training completion — franchisees finishing onboarding and ongoing eLearning modules.
3. Content access — franchisees actively using the brand’s resources, guides, and materials.
4. Brand-standard compliance — locations meeting operational standards on inspection.

Net growth by engagement tier, 2023-2025:

What this means in practice: a high-engagement brand targeting 100 net new units produces the same output as a low-engagement brand targeting 190. The investment in field operations, content, and training doesn’t just support compliance — it compounds, which is a different kind of return than most development budgets are actually built to capture.

Signed agreements reflect sales activity. Open units reflect actual system growth — and the gap between the two is where a meaningful share of projected growth quietly disappears if it isn’t actively managed.

SBNO pipeline by segment, entering 2026:

Enterprise brands carry the largest absolute pipeline, but at 3.8% of their active system, it’s a manageable share. For SMB brands, 13.3% of the entire active system sitting in pre-open status means a meaningful chunk of projected growth is waiting on buildout, permitting, training, or franchisee readiness — at that scale, a stalled unit has an outsized effect on total system growth.

Post-agreement engagement is what actually closes that gap: high-engagement brands opened 38.6 units on average in 2025 — 48% more than the 26.0 units opened on average by low-engagement brands. The difference shows up in what happens between signing and opening: consistent communication, structured training, field support during buildout, and a clear, managed path to launch day.

Three years of data across 460+ brands surfaces a consistent set of behaviors among the fastest-growing brands — not new concepts, but concepts executed more consistently at the top of the distribution:

• Faster response times. The brands improving conversion are the ones consistently shortening the gap between inquiry and first contact, directly attacking the #1 reason leads are lost (unresponsiveness).
• Sharper qualification, not more volume. Conversion doubled while lead volume barely moved — growth came from better candidate screening, not bigger ad budgets.
• Consistent franchisee engagement. Training, field visits, content access, and compliance support show up downstream in referral quality, opening rates, and system retention.
• Active SBNO management. The brands with the strongest opening rates maintain consistent contact and structured support all the way from signing through opening day, not just at the front end of the sales process.

The brands growing fastest aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest development budgets — they’re the ones executing most consistently across conversion, engagement, and post-agreement support.

Dataset & scope: Anonymized operational data from 460+ franchise brands on the FranConnect platform that have opted in to the benchmark — approximately 3.4 million leads, 33,000+ signed franchise agreements, and 178,000+ locations across 2023, 2024, and 2025. This is behavioral data pulled directly from platform activity, not survey responses. Brands are segmented by size (Enterprise: 300+ active units; Mid-Market: 75-300; SMB: under 75) across eight verticals: QSR, Retail Food, Retail Products, Commercial & Residential Services, Personal Services, Automotive, Business Services, and Full-Service Restaurants.

Key metrics defined:

• Lead-to-Award Conversion — signed franchise agreements divided by total tracked leads in the same period.
• Net Unit Growth — openings minus terminations within a calendar year.
• Engagement Quartile — a composite metric built from content downloads, training completion, field visit cadence, and brand-standard compliance; brands are ranked into quartiles, and the Engagement Multiplier compares the top quartile to the bottom quartile (sample: 309 brands with complete engagement data).
• SBNO (Sold but Not Opened) — units where a franchise agreement has been signed but the location has not yet opened as of the measurement date.

A note on limitations: These benchmarks reflect brands on FranConnect and may not represent the full franchise industry, including brands not using a structured franchise management system. Headline metrics are computed across the full dataset; source-level breakdowns (lead-source conversion rates, kill-reason categories) reflect sub-dataset cuts and should be read as additional analytical depth rather than as figures that reconcile precisely to the headline totals. Vertical-level conversion rates can be influenced by brand mix within each vertical, and year-over-year comparisons reflect the brands present in each year’s data rather than a fixed, cohort-adjusted panel.

These benchmarks are intended as a peer reference for franchise development leaders. They are provided for informational purposes only — they are not legal, financial, or franchise-sales guidance, and are not intended to represent or guarantee specific results for any brand. Actual performance will vary based on industry, market conditions, brand maturity, operational execution, and individual business practices. Any brand considering operational changes in response to these benchmarks should review them with qualified franchise counsel before implementation, and any brand incorporating these figures into materials shown to prospective franchisees should have the resulting language reviewed by franchise counsel for FDD Item 19 implications.