Category
Chicken and fries
375° Chicken 'n Fries and Mad for Chicken, compared from the dated filings only — two chicken brands, two footprints, two Item 19 samples, no winner.
Compiled from public filings and operator sites Reviewed 2026-08-15
Two chicken brands sit in this directory. They do not describe the same restaurant. 375° Chicken ‘n Fries is a compact chicken-and-fries concept franchising since 2023. Mad for Chicken is a Korean fried-chicken system founded in 2017 and franchising since 2019. Both have current US offerings. Both make an Item 19. Both are small. Treating them as one “chicken” opportunity is the error this page exists to prevent.
Every figure below comes from the brand records: 375° from the FDD issued 30 April 2024, dataset year 2024; Mad for Chicken from the FDD issued 3 May 2024, dataset year 2024. Unit counts are year-end 2023. Missing fields stay blank. The generated head-to-head is /compare/375-chicken-vs-mad-for-chicken/.
Two formats
375° discloses 800–1,500 square feet and an Item 7 of $324,100–$521,500 for a single outlet. Training is 23 classroom hours and 67 on the job. Grand opening advertising is $10,000. Headquarters is New York, New York. The founding year is not in this dataset; the franchise program year is 2023.
Mad for Chicken discloses a full restaurant of 2,000–4,000 square feet and an Item 7 of $320,125–$687,700. It separately discloses an express format at $242,500–$466,700. Training is 25 classroom hours and 106 on the job. Grand opening advertising is $15,000. Headquarters is Westbury, New York. The brand’s note in the dataset is explicit: the ranked Item 7 range is the full restaurant, not the express box.
A candidate who takes Mad for Chicken’s express low end and 375°’s compact kitchen as “about $320,000 for chicken” has combined two footnotes into a project neither filing sells. The low ends sit near each other — $324,100 versus $320,125 — while the premises can differ by thousands of square feet. Overlap on the cover-page total is not overlap on the build.
Two systems, both small, differently owned
375° records five outlets at year-end 2023: three company-owned and two franchised. Mad for Chicken records 19: 14 company-owned and five franchised. Both are corporate-heavy relative to their franchise counts. Mad for Chicken has more total shops and still only five franchised outlets in the source year. 375° has two.
That ownership mix matters for every later number. Item 20’s franchisee list will be short on both sides. Item 19 samples on both sides lean on affiliate or corporate operations. Support capacity, purchasing leverage and the number of comparable operators a candidate can call do not resemble a 93-unit or 145-unit row elsewhere in this directory. Small is a description of the 2023 counts. It is not a verdict on the food.
The operator’s later location pages are company statements. 375°’s current location page should not be backfilled into the 2023 Item 20 row. Mad for Chicken’s franchise page describes mall, QSR and storefront concepts; those labels are a reason to match the agreement to a specific Item 7 table, not a reason to average the express and full-restaurant ranges.
| Field | 375° Chicken ‘n Fries | Mad for Chicken |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Chicken and fries | Korean fried chicken |
| Franchising since | 2023 | 2019 |
| Units (2023) | 5 (3 company, 2 franchised) | 19 (14 company, 5 franchised) |
| Typical size | 800–1,500 sq ft | 2,000–4,000 sq ft (full restaurant) |
| Item 7 | $324,100–$521,500 | $320,125–$687,700; express $242,500–$466,700 |
| Franchise fee | $40,000 | $35,000 |
| Royalty | 6% | 5% |
| Brand fund | 1% | 1% brand fund plus 1% media marketing |
| Local advertising | 1% | 1% |
| Comparable stack | 8% | 8% |
| Term | 10 years; two additional 10-year terms | 10 years; two successor 10-year terms |
| Training | 23 classroom, 67 on the job | 25 classroom, 106 on the job |
| Item 19 | Yes. Affiliate income statement, 2020–2023; two corporate shops in the 2023 sales note | Yes. Unaudited 2022–2023 gross revenue for 12 affiliate and 3 franchised outlets; revenue only |
| Territory | A specific location, not exclusive | Non-exclusive; five-mile suburban minimum or quarter-mile in a city, sized after site approval |
| Source | FDD issued 30 April 2024 | FDD issued 3 May 2024 |
The royalty footnote in the 375° filing reads “five percent (6%).” This directory uses 6%, matching the Item 6 table, and leaves the conflict as a question for the current document. Mad for Chicken’s brand fund and media marketing fee can each rise to 2%, so the 8% starting stack is not a cap on the advertising burden.
Two Item 19 samples, neither a franchisee P&L
Both rows say yes. The populations are not the same kind of evidence. 375° uses an unaudited income statement for the affiliate that operates the restaurants, covering 2020 through 2023, and states 2023 results across two corporate shops. Mad for Chicken uses unaudited 2022 and 2023 gross revenue for twelve affiliate outlets and three franchised outlets, with no costs and no profit.
An income statement is more than revenue; it is still an affiliate statement for two corporate shops in the year called out by the note. A revenue-only table that is mostly affiliates is not a franchisee margin. A consultant who needs a franchised P&L does not have one on either row. A consultant who needs to know whether a representation exists at all has a yes on both rows and must then write down the sample.
The Item 19 ranking exists so that “Yes” is not treated as a typical-store badge. The field guide’s Item 19 chapter is the method for bounding a sample. Do not average these two representations. Do not import a number from a pitch deck into either column.
Territory, term and who each brand is not
Both grants are ten years with two additional ten-year terms. That similarity stops at the site. 375°’s territory is a specific approved location rather than an exclusive surrounding area. Mad for Chicken is also non-exclusive, but it does describe a radius once the site is approved: at least five miles in the suburbs, a quarter-mile in a city. A candidate who needs a protected trade area does not have one in either filing as recorded here.
375° is not a Korean fried-chicken dining room, not a 19-unit system, and not a long franchise history. Mad for Chicken is not a sub-1,500-square-foot fries-and-chicken counter, not an all-franchised chain, and not a brand whose Item 7 low end can be used without naming full restaurant versus express. Neither is a substitute for The Halal Guys’ platter system or for a German döner imbiss. Chicken-and-rice and chicken-and-fries are adjacent lunch occasions, not the same production line.
Before shortlisting either chicken brand
- Name the format on the offer: compact shop, full restaurant, express, mall or storefront.
- Match that format to the Item 7 table and square-foot range that belong to it.
- Write down the Item 19 population in words: affiliate, corporate, franchised, years, revenue versus income statement.
- Count franchised outlets in the source year, not brand shops on a later locator.
- Read the royalty footnote on 375° and the escalators on Mad for Chicken’s funds.
- Confirm that a non-exclusive location grant is acceptable.
How this pair sits in the wider set
On entry cost, both chicken brands sit in the lower half of disclosed Item 7 lows, near Döner Haus’s 2026 range of $359,500–$586,000 and well below GDK’s $690,500–$1,123,000 and Pepper Lunch’s $609,200–$1,471,500. On footprint, they sit at opposite ends of the sized group: 375° next to the compact imbiss, Mad for Chicken at the large-restaurant end. On system size, they are among the smallest live offerings, with only Pepper Lunch’s six US units and Döner Haus’s six and GDK’s seven in the same neighborhood.
On training, 375° is short of Mad for Chicken on the job and both are far shorter than Wienerschnitzel’s 480 on-the-job hours. On term, both are ordinary ten-year grants with two extra terms, unlike Great Greek’s 35 years or Wienerschnitzel’s 20 years without renewal.
The pair is useful because it shows how a cuisine label fails as a screen. A consultant following how to use this directory should keep both rows only if the candidate can name which box they are buying. This page compares two filings. It does not pick a chicken brand.