ADPADP
Mandatory600 for initial setup and $730 per month. One Point offers additional services, which you may purchase at your option. We have also negotiated a preferred vendor relationship with ADP or Toast Payroll
From the filings
HQ-led decisions
Hickory River Smokehouse
Quick service restaurantHickory River Smokehouse's most recent FDD, from 2026, reports 5 locations, all 5 franchised, at an average unit volume of $1,806,213 — a small system with unusually high per-unit volume. Item 1 names Bradley E. Bowman as President and Director and Krista S. Bowman as Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer; no CIO or CTO is disclosed in the most recent FDD, so the president is the signer. The filing does mandate technology, but only two systems: ADP and Toast Payroll are both required of franchisees, which leaves every category outside payroll and HR without a contractual incumbent.
For software vendors selling into US franchise brands.
Live signals
Total units
5
5 franchised
Unit growth YoY
0%
vs prior filing
AUV
$1.81M
Item 19, 2026
Royalty
5%
of gross sales
Ad fund
3%
national + local
Initial fee
$30K
per unit
Investment range
$315K–$675K
all-in, Item 7
Procurement
Approved supplier
from the filing
Non-compete
2 years
from the filing
Item 19
Claims
from the filing
Ongoing fee load
What the operator pays every month
The recurring percentage of gross sales named in this filing, before rent, labour or any technology fee.
8%of gross sales (FY2026)
15% reference
Mandated & recommended tech
The systems vendors compete with
2 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.
Toast PayrollToast
Mandatoryinitial setup and $730 per month. One Point offers additional services, which you may purchase at your option. We have also negotiated a preferred vendor relationship with ADP or Toast Payroll for pay
Franchisor behaviours
What the franchisor requires
22 requirements the franchisor states in this filing, each in its own words; 3 explicit no's; 9 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?
YesItem 8
At a minimum, you must purchase and use One Point’s basic accounting package for your franchised restaurant, which we estimate will cost $600 for initial setup and $730 per month.
Does the franchisor have direct or independent electronic access to the franchisee's financial, sales or customer records?
YesItem 11
We may access the information system and retrieve, analyze, download and use all software, data and files stored or used on the information system.
Must the franchisee submit periodic financial statements (monthly, quarterly or annual) to the franchisor?
YesFranchise agreement
Within 10 days after the end of each month, you must submit to us a report in the form and content as we periodically prescribe.
How the franchisor buys
Does the franchisor reserve the right to change designated suppliers or systems at any time?
YesItem 11
We reserve the right to designate changes or enhancements to the information system used in your restaurant including the electronic POS system, computer hardware, software and other equipment.
Does the franchisor or an affiliate receive rebates, commissions or other revenue from designated or approved suppliers?
YesItem 8
During our 2025 fiscal year, we received revenues of $101,247 in supplier rebates resulting from all required purchases and leases of products, supplies, equipment, and services by Hickory River Smokehouse franchisees.
Can a franchisee propose a new supplier for the franchisor's approval?
YesItem 8
You must notify us in writing prior to use if you want to offer for sale at the restaurant any brand of product, or to use in the operation of the restaurant any brand of food ingredient or other material item that is not then approved by us, or to purchase any product from a supplier that is not then designated by…
Communications
Does the franchisor own or control the business telephone numbers, or take them over when the agreement ends?
YesFranchise agreement
assign all right, title and interest in the telephone numbers for the Restaurant
Data and IT
Must the franchisee comply with PCI, data-security or cybersecurity standards set by the franchisor?
YesFranchise agreement
In addition, you must comply with any data protection and breach response policies we may periodically establish and you must not use or disclose Customer Data in a manner that would cause us to be in violation of our published privacy policy.
Franchise management
Does the franchisor conduct periodic inspections, audits or evaluations of the franchised business?
YesFranchise agreement
We or our authorized representative have the right to enter your Restaurant at all reasonable times during the business day for the purpose of making periodic evaluations and to ascertain if the provisions of this Agreement are being observed by you, to inspect and evaluate your building, land and equipment, and to…
Can the franchisor change the operations manual and brand standards unilaterally?
YesFranchise agreement
We may from time to time revise the contents of the Operations Manual and you expressly agree to comply with each new or changed requirement.
Must the franchisor approve the franchisee's site or location before opening?
YesItem 11
You may not proceed to develop a restaurant on the site unless we have consented to the site.
Marketing
Is a minimum grand opening advertising spend required?
YesFranchise agreement
We require you to spend, in addition to the required local marketing contribution described above, at least $10,000 for such grand opening activities.
Is the franchisee required to spend a minimum amount on local advertising or marketing, as a percentage of sales or a fixed amount?
YesItem 11
You must spend at least 1% of your Gross Sales on local advertising and promotion.
Operations
Must the franchisee buy products from a designated distributor?
YesItem 8
Currently, we require that every item of merchandise sold at your Restaurant that bears any of the Marks must be purchased from our designated marketing firm.
Must equipment be purchased from designated or approved suppliers?
YesFranchise agreement
You must only use approved products, inventory, equipment, fixtures, furnishings, signs, marketing materials, trademarked items and novelties, and other items (collectively, “Approved Supplies”) in the Restaurant as set forth in the approved supplies list(s) and/or purchased from vendors that we designate or approve…
Payments
Are royalties and other fees collected by automatic bank debit (ACH or electronic funds transfer) from the franchisee's account?
YesItem 6
Royalty Fees and National Marketing Fees are computed by our designated suppler of accounting services and automatically paid to us by ACH transfer.
Must the franchisee participate in a gift card program?
YesItem 8
You must participate in any gift card program that we designate for the Hickory River Smokehouse System, and we may require that you sign a participation agreement with a third-party program administrator, if any.
People
Does the franchisor require minimum staffing levels or specific roles?
YesItem 15
At least one Certified Manager must be present at and actively supervising the operation of the restaurant at any time it is open for business.
Point of sale
Must the franchisee use a specific point-of-sale system designated or approved by the franchisor?
YesItem 11
The current approved POS system is Toast.
Does the franchisor have independent access to the data in the franchisee's POS or computer system?
YesFranchise agreement
You acknowledge and agree that we will have full and complete access to information and data entered and produced by the Computer System.
Training
Can the franchisor charge the franchisee for additional, refresher or remedial training?
YesItem 11
We may require you to attend refresher training programs.
Is attendance at an annual convention or conference mandatory for the franchisee?
YesFranchise agreement
The Principal Owner must attend, at your expense, all annual franchise conventions we may hold or sponsor and all meetings relating to new products or product preparation procedures, new operational procedures or programs, training, restaurant management, sales or sales promotion, or similar topics.
The filing answers no to 3 questions
- Is the franchisor or an affiliate itself a supplier of required products, services or systems?Item 8
- Is the franchisee prohibited from operating its own website or social media accounts, or required to use pages the franchisor provides?Franchise agreement
- 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.
The franchisee/operator personally, or a small franchisor still owner-run. Wears every hat.
OwnerCEOPresidentPrincipal
- 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%.
- 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.
- 97.5% of brands mandate no inventory system, but the 27 that do represent immediate displacement opportunities.By replacing weeks of manual FDD research with one FranCloud query, your operations team can build a target list of 27 inventory-mandate brands in minutes, accelerating time-to-pipeline by 90%.
The vendor opportunity at Hickory River Smokehouse
Hickory River Smokehouse is a quick-service restaurant brand headquartered in Florida, and the most recent FDD on file is from 2026. That filing reports 5 total locations, all 5 of them franchised; the company-owned count is not disclosed in the most recent FDD, and year-over-year unit growth is not available. Average unit volume is $1,806,213, the royalty is 5.0%, and the initial term runs 10 years. Five units at that AUV imply roughly $9.0M of annual system volume, so this is a design-partner or reference account rather than a seat-count play — though $1.8M per store is high enough that individual operators can carry real software spend.
Who controls software purchasing
Item 1 names four people. Bradley E. Bowman is President and Director, and Krista S. Bowman is Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. Daniel D. Davis and Michael P. Madigan are both Franchise Support Agents. No CIO, CTO, or other technology officer is disclosed in the most recent FDD, which makes the president the signer and the two franchise support agents the closest thing to an evaluator. No parent company is on file, so the brand appears independently owned and there is no corporate procurement layer sitting above it. Our own operator mapping finds 6 operators, none of them multi-unit, across roughly 6 located units, split evenly across Illinois (2), Ohio (2) and Florida (2) — a wider geographic spread than a five-unit disclosure implies, and worth reconciling against the current filing before you build a territory plan.
Tech named in the FDD, and what is actually required
The 2026 filing names exactly two systems, and it mandates both. ADP is mandated: the FDD obliges the franchisee to use it. Toast Payroll is mandated on the same basis. That is an unusually clean signal — payroll and HR are contractually spoken for at the franchisee level, and displacing either means arguing with a written obligation rather than a preference. Everything else is silence. No point-of-sale system, no scheduling or labor platform, no loyalty or marketing stack, and no back-office accounting package is named anywhere in the filing. For a vendor, that silence is the opportunity: outside payroll, no category in this system carries a contractual incumbent, and the two mandates already establish that this franchisor is willing to write technology requirements into the agreement.
Procurement, renewals, and timing
Item 8 is where designated-supplier and approved-supplier requirements normally sit, and this filing produced no Item 8 extract, so whether Hickory River Smokehouse runs a designated, approved, or open procurement model is not established by the data we hold. The two mandates are the closest evidence, and they point to at least some HQ-designated systems. Item 17 is more concrete. The initial term is 10 years and renewal runs for a further 10. To renew, a franchisee must be in good standing under the franchise agreement, give timely notice of election to renew, sign a general release, pay the renewal fee, complete then-current training, and sign the then-current form of franchise agreement — which the filing warns may contain materially different terms and conditions than the original. That re-signing is the moment new technology requirements enter a system, and the moment an existing mandate can be rewritten.
How to read the Hickory River Smokehouse FDD
The 2026 document was filed with state franchise regulators, and the full PDF is embedded in the viewer below. Item 1 gives the executives named above; Item 8 covers supplier obligations; Item 11 covers computer systems and required technology; Item 17 covers renewal; Item 20 carries the unit tables behind the 5-unit count. Read those five and you have the whole vendor-relevant picture. If you want Hickory River Smokehouse scored against the rest of the US franchise corpus and returned as a ranked target list, talk to FranCloud.
Questions vendors ask
Hickory River Smokehouse, answered from the filing
Item 1 names Bradley E. Bowman, President and Director, as the signer, with Krista S. Bowman as Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. Daniel D. Davis and Michael P. Madigan are Franchise Support Agents and the likely evaluators. No CIO or CTO is disclosed in the most recent FDD.
Two systems, both mandated: ADP and Toast Payroll. The FDD obliges the franchisee to use each. No other technology is named anywhere in the filing — no point of sale, no scheduling, no loyalty or marketing platform — so those categories carry no contractual incumbent.
The 2026 FDD reports 5 locations, all 5 franchised, in the quick-service restaurant segment; the company-owned count is not disclosed in the most recent FDD. Our mapping finds 6 operators, none multi-unit, across roughly 6 located units in Illinois (2), Ohio (2) and Florida (2).
Not established. Item 8, where designated-supplier and approved-supplier requirements live, produced no extract from this filing, so we cannot say whether procurement is designated, approved, or open. The ADP and Toast Payroll mandates are the closest signal and point to at least some HQ-designated systems.
The initial term runs 10 years and renewal runs a further 10. Renewing requires good standing, timely notice, a general release, the renewal fee, then-current training, and signing the then-current agreement, which the filing warns may carry materially different terms. That re-signing is when technology requirements change. The current FDD is from 2026.
It was filed with state franchise regulators in 2026, and the full PDF is embedded in the viewer below. Read Item 1 for executives, Item 8 for supplier obligations, Item 11 for computer systems, Item 17 for renewal, and Item 20 for the unit tables.
Source
Read the filing itself
Every number on this page traces back to this document. Read it in full, page by page. Buy the original PDF to download, search, and annotate it.
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FDD alert
Tell me when this brand refiles.
We’ll email you the moment Hickory River Smokehouse files a new annual FDD, usually the freshest signal of a vendor change.
Operator footprint
Who runs the locations
3 operators run 6 mapped locations. 3 of them are multi-unit. Aggregate counts from the filing; no names.
Operators by units owned
2–9 units3
Top states by locations
| IL | 2 |
|---|---|
| OH | 2 |
| FL | 2 |
Related Quick service restaurant brands
Primary franchise filings · updated August 2026. Every figure is source-traceable and QA-checked.