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
Two chicken brands sit here. They describe different restaurants. 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; Mad for Chicken from the FDD issued 12 March 2025. The 375° count is year-end 2023 and the Mad for Chicken count is as of 2024, which is one more reason to read the source column before setting them side by side. 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 on file; 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 $321,125–$691,700. It separately discloses an express format at $243,500–$470,700, and a Multi-Unit Development Agreement at $263,500–$711,700 that prices a three-outlet commitment plus the first outlet rather than a third box. Training is 25 classroom hours and 196 on the job. Grand opening advertising is $15,000. Headquarters is Westbury, New York. The brand’s note in the files is explicit: the ranked Item 7 range is the full restaurant, not the express box.
Someone 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 $321,125 — 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 12 as of 2024: ten company-owned and two franchised, where its 3 May 2024 filing recorded 19 at year-end 2023, 14 company-owned and five franchised. Both are corporate-heavy relative to their franchise counts. Mad for Chicken has more total shops and, in the current document, the same number of franchised outlets as 375°: 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 buyer can call do not resemble a 93-unit or 145-unit row elsewhere on the table. Small is a description of the 2023 counts, not a judgement 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 | 5 (2023: 3 company, 2 franchised) | 12 (2024: 10 company, 2 franchised) |
| Typical size | 800–1,500 sq ft | 2,000–4,000 sq ft (full restaurant) |
| Item 7 | $324,100–$521,500 | $321,125–$691,700; express $243,500–$470,700; three-outlet development agreement $263,500–$711,700 |
| 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, 196 on the job |
| Item 19 | Yes. Affiliate income statement, 2020–2023; two corporate shops in the 2023 sales note | Yes. Unaudited 2023–2024 gross revenue, affiliate and franchised outlets, revenue only; six outlets that closed during 2024 excluded |
| 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 12 March 2025 |
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 2023 and 2024 gross revenue for affiliate and franchised outlets, with no costs and no profit, and its 12 March 2025 filing states that four affiliate and two franchised outlets were left out of the table because they closed and did not operate the full year.
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. Anyone who needs a franchised P&L does not have one on either row. Anyone who needs to know whether a representation exists at all has a yes on both rows and must then write down the sample.
Both brands also have more than one filing on hand, and both change shape when the earlier one is read beside the current one: what successive filings reveal works through the exclusion note on one side and a loss year that rolled out of the window on the other. 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. Someone 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 12-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.
The two chicken rows
- The format on the offer may be a compact shop, a full restaurant, express, mall or storefront.
- Each format has its own Item 7 table and square-foot range.
- 375°’s Item 19 is an affiliate income statement. Mad for Chicken’s is revenue only, with closures excluded.
- Franchised outlets in the source year are not brand shops on a later locator.
- 375°’s royalty footnote and Mad for Chicken’s fund escalators sit beside the 8% stack.
- Both grants are non-exclusive.
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, Döner Haus’s four 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 reader following how to use this directory should keep both rows only if the buyer can name which box they are buying. This page compares two filings. It does not pick a chicken brand.