375° Chicken 'n Fries franchise

A young, compact chicken system

375° Chicken ‘n Fries is a New York, New York, chicken-and-fries concept that began franchising in 2023. The founding year is not in the source. The FDD issued 30 April 2024 records five outlets at the end of 2023: three company-owned and two franchised. That is a small population with a short franchise history, so later growth on the operator’s current location page should not be backfilled into this dated Item 20 row.

The format is comparatively compact. Item 7 covers 800 to 1,500 square feet and an investment of $324,100 to $521,500. The filing describes a made-to-order chicken concept; any current sales claim would be marketing context rather than a substitute for the 2024 disclosure values used here. Grand opening advertising is $10,000. Working capital in the line-item table is three months.

What the filing makes comparable

The initial franchise fee is $40,000. The fee stack is 8%: a 6% royalty, 1% brand fund and 1% local advertising. The royalty footnote literally reads “five percent (6%).” This directory uses 6% because that is the figure in the Item 6 table and preserves the conflict as a reason to ask for clarification, not an invitation to average the two numbers.

Item 19 is an unaudited income statement for the affiliate operating the restaurants, covering 2020 through 2023. The note on file states 2023 results across two corporate shops. That is an affiliate sample, not a franchisee average, margin or forecast.

Training is disclosed as 23 classroom hours and 67 on the job. The territory is a specific approved location rather than an exclusive surrounding area, sized case by case and not exclusive. The ten-year initial term has two additional ten-year terms. Transfer fee is 50% of the then-current franchise fee. Together, those terms make 375° a useful small-format chicken peer, while its limited 2023 outlet population remains the main comparability constraint.

What the line items say about the build

The companion Item 7 record for the 30 April 2024 filing breaks the total into fifteen lines, and their shape is the useful part. Furniture, fixtures and equipment run $100,000 to $120,000, a band sitting almost level with leasehold improvements, construction and remodeling at $100,000 to $200,000. The cooking line, not the dining room, carries much of this build. Architectural plans are $8,000 to $12,000 and signage $10,000 to $12,000, both narrow bands, which is what a standardised drawing set and a single sign package tend to look like on paper rather than a scheme designed from scratch at each site.

Two lines deserve a second look for different reasons. Training expenses run from $100 to $5,000, a band wide enough to signal a travel-and-lodging allowance rather than a fee, and one a franchisee opening near the franchisor’s New York base would meet at the bottom while a distant operator would not. Operating expenses and additional funds cover three months at $30,000 to $60,000. Three months is the assumption the filing itself uses; it is a premise to test against a first-year plan, not a finding that three months suffices.

Against a $324,100 floor the fixed lines leave little room to move. The franchise fee is $40,000 flat, grand opening advertising is $10,000 flat, and the POS and computer-systems lines together run $4,500 to $7,500. What swings the total is construction, equipment and the lease and utility deposits at $10,000 to $30,000 — three site-driven lines, with the 800-to-1,500-square-foot assumption sitting underneath all of them.

Five outlets, three of them corporate

Item 20 in this row is five outlets at the end of 2023, three company-owned and two franchised, with franchising beginning in 2023. That is the earliest stage at which a system can file. The franchisor’s own operating record and the franchisee operating record are close to the same record, and the validation pool is two telephone calls. Expect to make both, and to weigh what an operator eight or ten months into a first store can usefully report about a ten-year agreement.

The founding year is absent from this row, and that gap is worth naming rather than closing. The affiliate income statement disclosed under Item 19 reaches back to 2020 and the franchise program dates from 2023; neither is a founding date, and treating either as one would put an age on the brand that the filing does not support.

Term, territory and what they leave open

The grant is a specific approved location rather than an area, sized case by case and not exclusive. The protection a buyer holds runs to a street address, not a market, so the question for Item 12 is what the franchisor may do at the next address over and how close is close. Ten years with two further ten-year terms is a long potential horizon attached to a short actual history. The transfer fee of 50% of the then-current franchise fee is an exit cost that floats rather than fixes: it cannot be quantified today because it is indexed to a fee the franchisor may change. No renewal fee appears in this row, which is a question for Item 17 rather than a sign that renewal is free.

An Item 19 that is one income statement, not a set of units

The shape of this representation constrains it before any figure in it is read. Both documents on file — the FDD issued 24 February 2023 and the FDD issued 30 April 2024 — present a single aggregate income statement for the corporate outlets rather than a table of restaurants. There is no per-unit column, no high and low, and no count attached to each year’s line, which means a reader cannot derive unit economics from it at all. Sales of $3,782,437 across two corporate shops in 2023 is a figure for a pair of restaurants operating under company management; dividing it by two would produce a number that appears nowhere in the filing and describes neither shop.

An aggregate statement does carry something a per-unit revenue table does not. It runs below the revenue line to net income, which is more than most Item 19s in this directory disclose, and it covers several consecutive years. What it will not support is the question a buyer actually has, which is what one 375° restaurant of the size they are being sold takes in and keeps. Costs pooled across a company estate include whatever the company estate carries, and a franchisee’s cost line contains a royalty, a brand fund and a local advertising requirement that a corporate shop does not pay to itself.

Two filings, and a year that leaves the window

The two filings do not cover the same period. The 24 February 2023 document reports calendar 2019 through 2022. The 30 April 2024 document reports 2020 through 2023. The window is four years wide in both, and it rolled forward by one year, so the two documents share three years and each holds one the other does not.

The year that dropped out is the only loss year in the series. Fiscal 2019 — $701,815 of sales, a net loss of $42,106, a margin of negative six percent — is in the older document and is simply not in the newer one, because the newer one starts a year later. Nothing improper has happened. A franchisor discloses the years its Item 19 covers, four years is a normal window, and rolling it forward each year is what a current filing does.

The consequence for a reader is arithmetic rather than conduct. Holding only the 30 April 2024 filing sees a series that opens in profit at 5.8% and climbs to 32.8%, and has no way to know from that document that the year before it opens was a loss. Holding both sees a small early restaurant business that lost money, turned a slim profit, then expanded sharply. Those are two different impressions of the same company, and the difference between them is one row that scrolled off the top of a table.

The 2022-to-2023 transition inside the newer filing rewards the same care. Sales fell slightly, from $3,879,935 to $3,782,437, while net income rose from $682,480 to $804,218 and the margin went from 17.5% to 21.3%. Whatever produced that — pricing, mix, a cost line, a change in the number of shops in the aggregate — the filing does not say, and this profile will not guess. It is a useful reminder that in an aggregate statement the top line and the bottom line can move in opposite directions and both be correct.

The reporting entity is renamed between the two documents

The income statement in the 24 February 2023 filing is headed 375 Ventures LLC. The one in the 30 April 2024 filing is headed 375 Enterprises LLC. The overlapping years carry identical figures, which is what establishes that this is one lineage under a new name rather than two different businesses being described.

That identity check is the whole point of noticing it. A name change with matching numbers is a housekeeping fact; a name change with numbers that did not match would be a different document describing a different entity, and a candidate comparing the two series would be adding together things that are not comparable. Ask which entity operates the corporate restaurants today, whether the franchisor’s financial statements are those of the same entity, and whether anything else moved with the name. What successive filings reveal collects the other cases here where a second document changed the reading of the first.

Neighbours on the aisle

375° is the compact, two-franchised-unit side of chicken and fries and 375° versus Mad for Chicken, and one of the four headline counts in emerging versus established. Mad for Chicken’s 2,000–4,000-square-foot Korean fried-chicken restaurant is the other chicken packet. Source: FDD issued 30 April 2024; 2024 study.

The take

375° is a compact chicken-and-fries peer. Mad for Chicken’s dining room is the other chicken packet. The royalty footnote reads “five percent (6%)”; the ranked table uses 6% from the Item 6 table. Item 19 is an unaudited affiliate income statement covering 2020–2023, with 2023 results stated across two corporate shops — not a franchisee average. The 24 February 2023 document covers 2019 through 2022 and holds a loss year, fiscal 2019 at $701,815 of sales and a net loss of $42,106, that the current window no longer reaches. 375 Ventures LLC and 375 Enterprises LLC carry identical overlapping years. Item 20 is five outlets at year-end 2023, three company and two franchised; later locator counts do not replace that snapshot. Item 7 is $324,100–$521,500 for 800–1,500 square feet. Stack is 8%. Training is 23 classroom and 67 on the job. Territory is a specific location, not exclusive. Term is ten years with two additional ten-year terms. Founding year is blank; franchising since 2023 is the date that is on file.