COOKIES BY DESIGN

The vendor opportunity at Cookies by Design

Cookies by Design operates 38 total units—37 franchised and 1 company-owned—according to its 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document. The brand sits in the quick-service restaurant segment with headquarters in New Jersey. Year-over-year unit growth declined by 11.9%, signaling a system in contraction. For software vendors, the addressable market is the 37 franchised locations, as the single company-owned unit likely follows the same tech mandates but represents a separate buying dynamic. Average unit volume is not disclosed in the most recent FDD. The royalty rate is 6.0%, and the initial franchise term runs 5 years.

Who controls software purchasing

The 2025 FDD lists two executives in Item 1: Andrew Berger, serving as Owner, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and David Polonitza, serving as President and Director. No CIO, CTO, or VP of Technology is named. In a system this size, software purchasing authority almost certainly sits with these two individuals. Vendors should prepare to engage Berger and Polonitza directly; there is no mapped operator footprint in our corpus, meaning no multi-unit franchisee layer to navigate. This is a pure HQ-driven sales motion.

Mandated and current tech stack

Item 11 of the FDD mandates CBD POS Software. This is the only named technology system in the disclosure. No additional operational, accounting, inventory, HR, or marketing platforms are identified as required or recommended. For vendors selling complementary or replacement software, the mandate creates both a barrier and a signal: the franchisor is willing to impose system-wide technology standards, but the current stack appears thin. Any pitch should address integration with or migration from CBD POS Software.

Procurement, renewals, and timing

No Item 8 procurement extract is available in our corpus, so the designated-supplier, approved-supplier, or open-purchasing model remains undisclosed. Renewal terms, drawn from Item 17, offer two identical five-year renewal windows, each conditioned on written notice, compliance with the Franchise Agreement, right to occupy the shop, completion of maintenance and remodeling, signing the then-current Franchise Agreement—which may contain materially different terms—and payment of a renewal fee. The materially-different-terms clause means each renewal cycle is a potential re-negotiation point where new technology requirements could be introduced. With initial terms at 5 years and a contracting unit base, the next wave of renewals may concentrate vendor opportunities around franchisees whose agreements are maturing.

How to read the Cookies by Design FDD

The full 2025 FDD is embedded below. It was filed with state franchise regulators and contains the complete Item 1 executive roster, Item 11 tech mandates, Item 17 renewal conditions, and unit-count data cited throughout this page. Reviewing the source document directly is the best way to validate the facts and spot additional vendor-relevant details—such as any territorial protections, transfer conditions, or advertising fund structures—that may influence a franchisee’s ability to adopt new software. For a ranked target list of franchise systems matched to your software category, FranCloud can help.