Crave Hot Dogs and BBQ vs Dog Haus

Neither of these franchisors operated a single company store in the 2024 counts. Crave Hot Dogs and BBQ shows 26 units, all 26 franchised. Dog Haus shows 58 units, all 58 franchised. Both rows come from the same May 2024 comparative study of published FDDs, so for once the two snapshots are contemporaneous, and both brands are young enough that their whole franchised history is visible: Crave was founded in 2018 and began franchising the same year, while Dog Haus was founded in 2010 and franchised from 2013 after three years as an operator.

A system with no company stores changes what diligence looks like

Both systems are wholly franchised, which has consequences. There is no franchisor-run store to walk into, no company P&L standing behind the operating model, and no in-house unit against which a franchisee’s numbers can be checked. Everything a buyer learns about how these businesses actually run comes from the people on the Item 20 lists, which is why the length of those lists is the more useful column here. Fifty-eight franchised outlets support a real calling programme. Twenty-six support a thorough one, if the buyer is willing to call most of them.

Franchising from year one, as Crave did in 2018, also means the franchisor’s operating knowledge and its franchising knowledge were acquired simultaneously. Dog Haus ran for three years before it sold a franchise. Neither history predicts anything, and both are worth putting to the franchisor directly: how many of the outlets in the count opened in the last two years, how many closed, and how many transferred.

The investment ranges overlap so completely that they cannot separate the two

Crave discloses $301,500–$1,192,500. Dog Haus discloses $357,437–$625,800. The Dog Haus range sits inside the Crave range from end to end, which means the totals do not distinguish the projects at all — they only show that one filing describes a much wider band of outcomes. That $301,500-to-$1,192,500 spread is the widest Item 7 range on the table, and neither row discloses a square footage or carries Item 7 line items here, so nothing published here explains what moves it. Site type, build scope, equipment package, market: all plausible, none evidenced.

The request is therefore specific: both current filings, Item 7 tables side by side, and a look at which buckets carry the width. Until that is done, a buyer using Crave’s low end as a budget and Dog Haus’s mid range as a comparison is comparing two things neither document claims to be equivalent.

Crave requires $5,000 of grand opening spend; Dog Haus requires $20,000–$25,000, which is a different assumption about how a store is launched rather than a rounding difference. Initial fees run the other way, $45,000 at Crave against $40,000 at Dog Haus.

Fee stacks, and the cash that sits outside them

Ranked, Crave is 10% and Dog Haus is 8%. Crave’s components are a 7% royalty, matched here only by the top of Capriotti’s disclosed 6–7% band, plus a 2% brand fund and 1% local advertising. Dog Haus is 6% royalty, or 4% for a ghost kitchen, plus 2% for marketing, creative and technology, with no required local spend.

The stack understates Dog Haus twice over. That 2% may rise to 3.5%, and a separate technology development fee runs $5,000 a year regardless of volume. A fixed annual fee is not neutral: it is a larger share of a quieter store’s sales than of a busy one’s, and it does not appear anywhere in a percentage comparison. The ghost-kitchen royalty of 4% is the other disclosure worth pausing on, because a franchisor that prices a non-storefront channel separately has decided that channel is a different business, and a buyer considering one should ask what support, territory and marketing obligation attach to it.

On the Crave side, the 7% royalty is what it says, and the row discloses no escalation language, which is a reason to check the current filing.

Exit, territory and the two ends of the training spectrum

Both terms are ten years. Crave has one ten-year option; Dog Haus discloses successive ten-year terms, which is a longer contractual runway. Renewal costs $5,000 on both sides. Transfers cost $5,000 at Crave and $17,500 at Dog Haus, so the cost of selling the business differs by more than three times, and a buyer whose plan is to build and sell in year six should price that difference now rather than discovering it then.

Territory is a flat five-mile radius at Crave. At Dog Haus it runs from half a mile to five miles, set from demographics, population, income and age — meaning the buyer does not know the size of their area until the franchisor has run that analysis on their market.

Training is the widest proportional gap in the pair. Crave requires 15 classroom hours and 37 on the job. Dog Haus requires 40 and 102. Those are attendance obligations, not measures of quality, but a 52-hour programme and a 142-hour programme imply different views of how much has to be taught before a store opens.

What the columns leave open

Dog Haus makes a financial performance representation and this directory carries no description of its population; Crave makes none. The next move is identical in both cases — open Item 19 in the current document, establish the sample or confirm the absence, and refuse to fill a blank from a portal listing or a discovery-day slide.

The hot dogs and sausage essay is the category reading. A wholly franchised system and a wide Item 7 are facts to investigate, not scores.