If you sell software or services into franchising, the Jersey Mike's FDD is one of the most instructive filings you can read. It shows exactly how a top-performing, private-equity-owned QSR system controls its vendor relationships: what's mandated, what's monetized, and what's still up to the franchisee. Every number below comes from the franchisor's own 2026 disclosure document, the kind of primary-source detail a franchise database built on FDDs surfaces in minutes.
How big is Jersey Mike's, and how fast is it growing?
Per Item 20, the system ended fiscal 2025 with 3,227 restaurants: 3,201 franchised and 26 owned by affiliates. Net growth was +238 units in 2025 (259 franchised openings), following +314 in 2024 and +288 in 2023. Growth is still strong, just off its 2024 peak.
The forward pipeline is bigger than the trailing numbers. Table 5 projects roughly 550+ new franchised outlets for fiscal 2026, led by California (47), Texas (37), New York (34), Florida (33), and Pennsylvania (30). The FDD also notes a typical nine-month gap between signing and opening, a predictable window for anyone selling build-out, hiring, insurance, or equipment services.
What does an average Jersey Mike's do in sales?
Item 19 reports fiscal 2025 unit volumes for 2,606 traditional franchised restaurants: an average of $1,367,578, a median of $1,305,850, a high of $3,228,616, and a low of $512,332. 44% of units met or exceeded the average. Notably, corporate pulled these figures directly from the mandated POS system, a reminder of how much operational data the franchisor sees in real time.
Franchisees pay a 6.5% royalty weekly plus 5% in advertising contributions (1% corporate fund, 4% national media fund, contractually capped at 6% combined). Initial investment runs $436,176 to $1,162,228 per restaurant.
Who owns Jersey Mike's?
Blackstone. The FDD's Item 20 notes reference the Blackstone Inc. acquisition taking effect around January 15, 2025, with the franchisor (A Sub Above, LLC) now sitting under a chain of holding entities including Submarine Buyer Holdco LLC. For vendors, PE ownership usually means two things at once: sharper scrutiny on costs and vendor consolidation, and real appetite for technology that scales royalty-bearing revenue.
What technology does Jersey Mike's mandate?
Item 11 makes the tech stack one of the most locked-down in QSR. Franchisees must buy POS hardware and software exclusively through ReSource Point of Sale, LLC at roughly $7,500 per register, pay corporate a $2,000-per-register POS license fee, pay $4,500 to connect to the company's private network, use a designated credit card processor (with a $750 one-time software fee), and pay $395 per month for the software license and support package, a fee the agreement allows to rise to $795. Corporate can also require system upgrades of up to $50,000 over the franchise term, and franchisees may not create any independent website or social media presence without approval.
How does Jersey Mike's make money from its vendors?
Item 8 is unusually candid. In fiscal 2025, corporate received $19,384,741 in commissions and support fees from suppliers, while its purchasing affiliate FoodCo received $139,563,434 in supplier payments tied to franchisee purchases. Disclosed structures include $525 per POS register sold, about $2 per store per month from the POS service provider, $0.1226 per card transaction, and, most useful as a template, 29.6% of the fees paid to an HR software vendor that franchisees may, but are not required to, use.
Approved suppliers account for roughly 85% of a franchisee's ongoing purchases. A franchisee who wants an unapproved supplier must notify corporate, pay testing costs, and if corporate doesn't respond within 60 days the request is deemed denied.
Where's the whitespace for vendors?
Three openings stand out in the filing. First, optional categories: payroll, scheduling, accounting, insurance, banking, and maintenance aren't mandated, and the HR-software precedent shows corporate will bless optional vendors (for a share). Second, the opening pipeline: 550+ projected 2026 openings each need construction trades, signage, permits, staffing, and insurance, much of it outside the approved-supplier list. Third, the resale wave: franchisee-to-franchisee transfers jumped from 77 in 2024 to 218 in 2025, nearly 3x, led by California, Texas, and Florida. Every transfer is a new owner making fresh vendor decisions.
There's also a side door: Item 20's franchisee data reveals multi-unit operators like PCR JM MI, LLC (14 units in Michigan) and Brentwood Subs, LLC (11 in Tennessee). Winning one operator deploys your product across their whole portfolio without franchisor sign-off, for anything the FDD doesn't mandate. The selling-to-franchise-systems playbook covers how to run operator and corporate motions in parallel.
What the Jersey Mike's FDD teaches about prospecting any franchise
Everything above came from one brand's filing. This is what franchise data analytics looks like in practice: the FDD tells you, before the first call, whether your category is open or closed, who actually decides, and what corporate expects to be paid. FranCloud extracts these signals (tech mandates, supplier economics, growth, operators) across every active US franchise system, searchable at the franchise directory. If you're new to disclosure documents, start with our guide to what's in an FDD, or see pricing to run this analysis on your own target list. For a parallel brand read, see the Domino's Pizza FDD breakdown.