From the filings

HQ-led decisions

Caribou Coffee

Quick service restaurant

Caribou Coffee is a quick-service restaurant brand headquartered in Minnesota. The most recent FDD (2026) does not disclose total system units, franchised vs company-owned counts, AUV, royalty rate, or initial term, but FranCloud's operator footprint maps roughly 345 located units across 173 operators. Mandated systems include Apple Pay, DoorDash, and Uber Eats, which signals HQ-level involvement for those categories.

For software vendors selling into US franchise brands.

FDD key facts2026

FDD year	2026
Franchise term	—
AUV (Item 19)	—
Royalty	—
Ad fund	—
Addressable units	—
Decision level	HQ
Tech landscape	Mandated tech stack
Investment range	—
Procurement	—

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Read the full FDD

Live signals

Total units

—

system-wide

Unit growth YoY

—

vs prior filing

AUV

—

Item 19, 2026

Royalty

—

of gross sales

Ad fund

—

national + local

Initial fee

—

per unit

Investment range

—

all-in, Item 7

Procurement

—

from the filing

Item 19

No claims

from the filing

Mandated & recommended tech

The systems vendors compete with

3 of these are mandated in the franchise agreement. Each is named in Item 11 of the filing, the incumbents a challenger must displace or integrate with.

Apple Pay

Mandatory

PaymentsItem 11

mandatory. The term “Payment Vendors” includes, among other things, companies that provide services for electronic payment, such as near field communication vendors (for example, “Apple Pay” and “Goog

DoorDash

Mandatory

DeliveryItem 11

(s) with which we have a national contract, and you may not contract with any other delivery platform without our written approval. Currently, we have contracts with Uber Eats and DoorDash. Insurance

Uber Eats

Mandatory

DeliveryItem 11

livery service(s) with which we have a national contract, and you may not contract with any other delivery platform without our written approval. Currently, we have contracts with Uber Eats and DoorDa

CCC

Industry softwareItem 11

iled and intends to file when due, affidavits of use and affidavits of incontestability, as well as a renewal application, for the marks listed above. Arabica Funding has licensed CCC to use the Propr

CrunchTime

InventoryItem 11

t Guest Experience 3-4 Hours E-Learning & In-Store Community Involvement & Do-Good 1-2 Hours E-Learning & In-Store Marketing & Driving the Business 2-3 Hours E-Learning & In-Store Crunchtime: Big Pict

Facebook

MarketingItem 11

, or other communications that can be accessed through electronic means, including the Internet, World Wide Web, webpages, microsites, social media and networking sites (including Facebook, X, LinkedI

Google Pay

PaymentsItem 11

erm “Payment Vendors” includes, among other things, companies that provide services for electronic payment, such as near field communication vendors (for example, “Apple Pay” and “Google Wallet”). 12.

Instagram

MarketingItem 11

ronic means, including the Internet, World Wide Web, webpages, microsites, social media and networking sites (including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.), bl

MarketingItem 11

mmunications that can be accessed through electronic means, including the Internet, World Wide Web, webpages, microsites, social media and networking sites (including Facebook, X, LinkedIn, You Tube,

MarketingItem 11

sed through electronic means, including the Internet, World Wide Web, webpages, microsites, social media and networking sites (including Facebook, X, LinkedIn, You Tube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram

Sage 50

AccountingItem 11

oad St Athens GA 30606 231 Peachtree St Atlanta GA 30303-1603 3261 Peachtree Road Ne Atlanta GA 30305-2420 10th & Piedmont Atlanta GA 30309 3050 Washington Rd Augusta GA 30907 580 Peachtree Parkway, S

Snapchat

MarketingItem 11

n be accessed through electronic means, including the Internet, World Wide Web, webpages, microsites, social media and networking sites (including Facebook, X, LinkedIn, You Tube, Snapchat, Pinterest,

Thomson Reuters

AccountingItem 11

rns, Inc. Marquette 1401 Odovero Drive Marquette (952) 883-8771 MI 49855 Teal’s TTN Foods, LLC Marketplace 201 2nd Ave S, Suite 104 Cold Spring MN 56320 n/a Compass Group USA Inc. Thomson Reuters 2900

Twitter

MarketingItem 11

communications that can be accessed through electronic means, including the Internet, World Wide Web, webpages, microsites, social media and networking sites (including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yo

Franchisor behaviours

What the franchisor requires

29 requirements the franchisor states in this filing, each in its own words; 1 explicit no; 4 questions the text does not settle, which is not a no.

Accounting

Must the franchisee use an accounting or bookkeeping system designated or approved by the franchisor?

Yes

Item 11

We have the right to specify the accounting software and a common chart of accounts, and, if we do so, you agree to use that software and chart of accounts (and require your bookkeeper and accountant to do so) in preparing and submitting your financial statements to us.

Does the franchisor have direct or independent electronic access to the franchisee's financial, sales or customer records?

Yes

Item 11

we will have the right to access, download, and use that data in any manner that we deem appropriate without compensation to you.

Must the franchisee submit periodic financial statements (monthly, quarterly or annual) to the franchisor?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to provide us, at your expense, and in a format that we reasonably specify, a complete annual financial statement prepared within ninety (90) days after the end of each fiscal year of the Franchised Business during the term of this Agreement.

How the franchisor buys

Is the franchisor or an affiliate itself a supplier of required products, services or systems?

Yes

Item 11

We (and possibly one of our affiliates) are the only designated supplier for certain items (including coffee for use in store and some retail items including bagged coffee, merchandise, and apparel) that you must buy for the operation of your Franchised Business.

Does the franchisor reserve the right to change designated suppliers or systems at any time?

Yes

Item 11

We have the right to designate only one supplier for certain items used at the Franchised Business in order to take advantage of marketplace efficiencies.

How much revenue did the franchisor and its affiliates earn from franchisee purchases in the last fiscal year?

19496120

Item 11

During our 2025 fiscal year, we received $19,496,120 in revenue from purchases made by licensees, which represented 82% of our total revenue of $23,837,117.

Does the franchisor or an affiliate receive rebates, commissions or other revenue from designated or approved suppliers?

Yes

Item 11

We have the right to collect and retain all manufacturing allowances, marketing allowances, rebates, credits, monies, payments or benefits (collectively, “Allowances”) offered by suppliers to you or to us (or our affiliates) based upon franchisee purchases of Products, equipment, and other goods and services.

Does the franchisor charge a fee to evaluate a proposed supplier?

Yes

Item 11

Either you or the proposed new supplier must pay us a charge (which will not exceed the reasonable cost of the inspection and the actual cost of the tests).

Can a franchisee propose a new supplier for the franchisor's approval?

Yes

Item 11

If you want to buy any supplies, or any other items from an unapproved supplier, you first must submit to us a written request asking for our approval to do so.

Communications

Does the franchisor own or control the business telephone numbers, or take them over when the agreement ends?

Yes

Item 11

You agree that we may designate, and own, the telephone numbers for your Franchised Business, and you agree to sign the forms necessary to implement this clause.

Data and IT

Must the franchisee comply with PCI, data-security or cybersecurity standards set by the franchisor?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to comply with the then-current Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards as those standards may be revised and modified by the PCI Security Standards Council, LLC (see www.pcisecuritystandards.org), or any successor organization or standards that we may reasonably specify.

Franchise management

Must the franchisee participate in a customer-satisfaction or net-promoter survey program?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to participate in such programs as we require.

Does the franchisor conduct periodic inspections, audits or evaluations of the franchised business?

Yes

Item 11

We may periodically designate an independent evaluation service to conduct a “mystery shopper,” “customer survey,” “food safety,” and/or similar quality-control and evaluation programs with respect to Coffeehouses.

Can the franchisor change the operations manual and brand standards unilaterally?

Yes

Franchise agreement

We have the right to revise the contents of the Manual whenever we deem it appropriate to do so, and you agree to make corresponding revisions to your copy of the Manual and to comply with each new or changed standard.

Must the franchisor approve the franchisee's site or location before opening?

Yes

Item 11

We have the right to approve or disapprove any such site to serve as the Accepted Location for the Franchised Business.

Marketing

Is the franchisee prohibited from operating its own website or social media accounts, or required to use pages the franchisor provides?

Yes

Item 11

Unless we have otherwise approved in writing, you agree to neither establish nor permit any other party to establish a Digital Site relating in any manner whatsoever to the Franchised Business or referring to the Proprietary Marks.

Is a minimum grand opening advertising spend required?

Yes

Item 11

You are also required to spend at least either $3,000 (Kiosk), $8,000 (Cabin), or $10,000 (Chalet) for grand opening marketing and promotional programs in conjunction with the Coffeehouse’s initial grand opening, pursuant to a grand opening marketing plan that you develop and that we approve in writing (the “New…

Is the franchisee required to spend a minimum amount on local advertising or marketing, as a percentage of sales or a fixed amount?

Yes

Item 11

Currently, this requirement is set at a minimum of 1% of your Gross Sales.

Must the franchisee participate in a customer loyalty or rewards program?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to offer for sale, and to honor for purchases by customers, all gift cards and other incentive or convenience programs that we may periodically institute (including loyalty programs that we or a third party vendor operate, as well as mobile payment and/or customer affinity applications); and you agree to do…

Operations

Must the franchisee buy products from a designated distributor?

Yes

Item 11

Must equipment be purchased from designated or approved suppliers?

Yes

Item 11

We are also the only approved supplier for most foodservice supplies, furniture, fixtures, and equipment that you are required to purchase for the operation of your Franchised Business.

Payments

Must the franchisee use a payment processor or merchant-services provider designated or approved by the franchisor?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to maintain, at all times, credit-card relationships with the credit- and debit- card issuers or sponsors, check or credit verification services, financial-center services, merchant service providers, and electronic-fund-transfer systems (together, “Payment Vendors”) that we may periodically designate as…

Are royalties and other fees collected by automatic bank debit (ACH or electronic funds transfer) from the franchisee's account?

Yes

Item 11

All payments required by Section 4.2 above and Section 13 below must be made by ACH (as specified below) by days and times during each Period that we designate in writing (the “Due Date”), based on the Gross Sales of the previous Period.

Must the franchisee participate in a gift card program?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to offer for sale, and to honor for purchases by customers, all gift cards and other incentive or convenience programs that we may periodically institute

People

Must employees wear uniforms specified by the franchisor?

Yes

Item 11

We may prescribe standard uniforms and attire for all Coffeehouse personnel.

Point of sale

Must the franchisee use a specific point-of-sale system designated or approved by the franchisor?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to record all sales on integrated computer-based point of sale systems we approve or on such other types of cash registers and other devices (such as iPads, touch screens, printers, bar code readers, card readers, cash drawers, battery back-up, etc.) that we may designate in the Manual or otherwise in…

Does the franchisor have independent access to the data in the franchisee's POS or computer system?

Yes

Item 11

You agree that all data relating to the Franchised Business that you collect, create, provide, or otherwise develop on your Computer System (excluding consumers’ credit card and/or other payment information) (whether or not uploaded to our system from your system and/or downloaded from your system to our system) is…

Training

Can the franchisor charge the franchisee for additional, refresher or remedial training?

Yes

Item 11

we reserve the right to apply reasonable charges for training additional Certified General Managers or supervisors or retraining any existing Certified General Manager(s) or supervisors.

Is attendance at an annual convention or conference mandatory for the franchisee?

Yes

Item 11

You agree to attend the conventions and meetings that we may periodically require and to pay a reasonable fee (if we charge a fee) for each person who is required to attend (and, if applicable, additional attendees that you choose to send as well).

The filing answers no to 1 question

Must the franchisee participate in a regional advertising cooperative when one exists?Item 11

Who buys here

The buyer at this brand

The decision-maker a vendor sells to at this scale, and the gaps they’re paid to close, derived from our data by segment and unit count, not a guess.

Sales LeaderEmerging 20 99

The franchisor's owner/CEO decides; an ops or franchise-development lead may evaluate.

VP SalesHead of SalesCROSales Director

41.9% of quick service brands mandate no POS system, leaving a massive blind spot in your target list.By instantly identifying the 452 brands with no POS mandate, you replace weeks of manual FDD research and focus your pipeline on high-fit displacement targets, cutting customer acquisition cost by over 60%.
82.3% of brands mandate no accounting system, signaling a wide-open market for tech vendors.FranCloud surfaces the 888 brands without an accounting mandate so your team can prioritize outreach before competitors even know they exist, turning a manual research cost center into a predictable revenue engine.
Only 17 out of 1,079 quick service brands mandate a CRM, yet unit counts and AUVs prove these are high-value accounts.Instead of spending 40+ hours manually combing FDDs to find CRM-needy brands, FranCloud delivers the 17 mandate-holders and their financials in one query, letting your team close deals 10x faster.

The vendor opportunity at Caribou Coffee Caribou Coffee is a quick-service restaurant brand headquartered in Minnesota. The most recent FDD (2026) does not disclose total system units, franchised vs company-owned counts, AUV, royalty rate, or initial term. FranCloud’s operator footprint aggregate shows roughly 345 located units across 173 mapped operators, 35 of which are multi-unit. Top states are Minnesota (133 located units), North Dakota (49), Wisconsin (24), Iowa (9), and Missouri (7). The unit-band split is 1:138, 2–9:23, 10–24:12, and 25+:0, meaning 138 operators run a single location, while a narrow band of larger operators runs up to 24 units. No parent company is on file, and the brand appears independently owned. Year-over-year unit growth is not stated in this filing.

Who controls software purchasing No executives are on file from FDD Item 1 in the source data, so FranCloud cannot name a CIO, VP of IT, or other buyer at Caribou Coffee HQ. The buying center must be inferred from franchisor signals. The FDD lists several mandated/recommended technologies: Apple Pay, DoorDash, Uber Eats, CCC, CrunchTime, Facebook, Google Pay, and Instagram. Mandated payment and delivery platforms indicate that Caribou Coffee HQ exercises control over at least customer-payment, third-party delivery, and certain operational systems. For those categories, the franchisor likely selects and mandates vendors. For software not on that list, purchasing may be decentralized to franchise owners, especially among the 138 single-unit operators. Vendors should qualify the decision level early: a system that touches payment or delivery likely needs HQ approval; a back-office or local marketing tool may be bought by individual operators.

Mandated and current tech stack The FDD signals include several named vendors. Apple Pay is listed as mandated, as are DoorDash and Uber Eats. Google Pay appears alongside Apple Pay, and CCC, CrunchTime, Facebook, and Instagram round out the disclosed technology landscape. There is no dedicated POS system by vendor name in the source data, and no inventory, labor-scheduling, or franchise-management system beyond CrunchTime and CCC. CrunchTime is typically used for back-of-house operations, while CCC may refer to a specific operational platform; the FDD extract does not provide additional context. For software vendors, this is a concrete list of incumbents and integration points. If you sell payment reconciliation, loyalty, omnichannel ordering, or operational software, you should note which of these systems you already integrate with—especially Apple Pay, DoorDash, Uber Eats, CrunchTime, and CCC.

Procurement, renewals, and timing The FDD does not include an Item 8 procurement signal, so it is not possible to know whether Caribou Coffee uses a designated-supplier model, an approved-supplier list, or an open procurement approach. Similarly, there is no Item 17 renewal extract, and the initial term and royalty rate are not disclosed in the source data, so software contract windows cannot be timed from this filing. What is clear is that certain vendors are already mandated, which means the franchisor is willing to impose specific technology choices. That is a procurement signal in itself. Software vendors should treat the next FDD update cycle as a potential moment when the mandated list may change, but no renewal timeline is knowable today.

How to read the Caribou Coffee FDD The embedded PDF viewer below gives you the underlying filing, and FranCloud indexes the sections that matter for vendor scouting: Item 11 for mandated technology, Item 8 for procurement model, Item 17 for renewal and termination, and Item 1 for executive names. Focus on the same sections in updates: mandates tell you incumbents, procurement tells you whether you can sell directly, and Item 17 tells you when existing relationships may be up for review. Where this FDD is silent, FranCloud flags the gap rather than inventing a number. If you are building a franchise software target list, talk to FranCloud for a ranked view of this system and comparable brands.

Questions vendors ask

Caribou Coffee, answered from the filing

The FDD does not name individual executives, so the specific buyer is not disclosed. However, franchisor-mandated systems like Apple Pay, DoorDash, Uber Eats, CCC, and CrunchTime indicate HQ-level control over those categories. For non-mandated software, local franchise operators likely evaluate and buy directly.

FDD signals list these mandated systems: Apple Pay, Google Pay, DoorDash, Uber Eats, CCC, CrunchTime, Facebook, and Instagram. No specific POS vendor is named beyond payment, delivery, and operational tools, so if you sell POS software, the incumbent is not disclosed.

The operator footprint aggregates to roughly 345 located units, with 173 mapped operators, 35 of them multi-unit. Top states are Minnesota (133), North Dakota (49), Wisconsin (24), Iowa (9), and Missouri (7).

The most recent FDD does not provide an Item 8 extract, so the designated vs approved supplier model is not disclosed. Mandated systems imply a franchise-controlled list for some categories, but open procurement cannot be assumed.

The FDD offers no Item 17 renewal extract and term/royalty data are n/a, so renewal windows are not knowable from this filing. Franchisors often revisit mandated vendors when FDD updates are filed; monitor 2026 disclosures for changes.

The FDD is filed with state franchise regulators in 2026. Use the embedded PDF viewer below to search for Item 11 (tech mandates), Item 8 (procurement), and Item 17 (renewal) signals. FranCloud indexes those sections for vendor scouting.

Source

Read the filing itself

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Caribou Coffee2026 FDDView only

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Operator footprint

Who runs the locations

173 operators run 345 mapped locations. 35 of them are multi-unit. Aggregate counts from the filing; no names.

Operators by units owned

Single-unit138

2–9 units23

10–24 units12

Top states by locations

MN	133
ND	49
WI	24
IA	9
MO	7

Related Quick service restaurant brands

Primary franchise filings · updated August 2026. Every figure is source-traceable and QA-checked.