Crave Hot Dogs and BBQ franchise

One brand, several physical formats

Crave Hot Dogs and BBQ is a Cheyenne, Wyoming, system founded and franchising in 2018. The May 2024 comparative study of published FDDs records 26 outlets as of 2024, all franchised, no company stores. Its official franchise page currently promotes brick-and-mortar restaurants, express units and food trucks. Those formats have different site and buildout needs, so a single historical Item 7 row should not be applied to all of them.

The study range is $301,500 to $1,192,500. Its width signals uncertainty or format scope that must be resolved in the underlying document; it does not by itself prove that the endpoints correspond to a shell and a second-generation space. Typical square footage is not in the source. The public 2024 Crave FDD describes restaurant, express and food-truck offerings, which is why a current buyer should match the agreement and Item 7 table to the exact format being considered.

Fees, Item 19 and support in the study

The initial franchise fee is $45,000. The comparable ongoing stack is 10%: 7% royalty, 2% brand fund and 1% local advertising. Grand opening is $5,000. There is no Item 19 financial performance representation in the study row. That absence matters more than promotional growth language because it limits which financial claims may be made to a prospect.

Training is 15 classroom hours and 37 on the job, the shortest combined commitment among brands here that quote both. The territory is a five-mile radius. The agreement term is ten years with one ten-year option. Renewal fee $5,000; transfer fee $5,000. What a 52-hour training program covers, whether the radius has carve-outs, and which of the operator’s physical formats the disclosed costs actually assume — those are the facts still sitting in the current FDD.

A system that franchised from the start

Crave was founded in 2018 and began franchising in 2018. The two dates being identical is itself a disclosure: there is no pre-franchise period in this row during which the concept was proven as a company business. The 2024 count reinforces the point — 26 outlets, all franchised, no company stores. On the evidence in this row the franchisor has never been recorded as operating a restaurant of its own.

That is a legitimate structure and many systems are built on it, but it moves the burden of proof. Where a franchisor operates units, a buyer can ask what those units cost to build, how they are staffed and what was learned before selling began. Here each of those questions has to go to franchisees on the Item 20 list, and to the franchisor as a question about its principals’ background under Item 2 rather than about its own store operations.

Twenty-six outlets spread across three physical formats is also a thin base per format. Counted together, restaurants, express units and food trucks make the population look larger than the number of operators who have opened any one of them, so a diligence sample should be built format by format rather than at random.

Ten per cent, and where it comes from

The 7% royalty is the highest disclosed royalty rate here, and with a 2% brand fund and 1% local advertising the comparable stack reaches 10%. Neither the royalty nor the fund carries an escalation note in this row. That differs from several peers here and should be confirmed against Item 6 of the current document rather than treated as a cap.

The rest of the structure runs the other way. The initial fee is $45,000, but grand opening is $5,000, the renewal fee is $5,000 and the transfer fee is $5,000 — all at the low end of what this directory records for those events. A structure that keeps entry, renewal and exit charges modest while carrying the highest ongoing percentage is a design choice with consequences: it moves the franchisor’s return off one-off transactions and onto continuing sales, and it makes any projection far more sensitive to the royalty assumption than to any of the fixed charges.

The Item 7 band of $301,500 to $1,192,500 is the widest disclosed here, and no square-foot assumption accompanies it. Until the applicable format is fixed that range is not a budget; it is the outer envelope of several different projects sharing one row.

Fifty-two hours

Item 11 discloses 15 classroom hours and 37 on the job. The combined 52 is the shortest commitment among the brands here that quote both figures, and it sits beside a menu spanning hot dogs and barbecue and an offer spanning three build types. Barbecue is a production method with long cook cycles and real yield consequences, so the question is not whether 52 hours is enough in the abstract but what it specifically covers: which format the curriculum assumes, whether smoking and holding procedures are taught in person, who from the buyer’s team must attend, and what the franchisor supplies at the opening itself. Item 11 and Item 15 answer that. The hours on their own do not.

Neighbours on the aisle

Crave is the young, multi-format, no-representation row in hot dogs and sausage. Wienerschnitzel and Dog Haus are the other sausage packets; neither is a food equivalent to döner. Source: May 2024 comparative study of published FDDs; 2024 study.

The take

Crave is a small-format hot-dog and barbecue neighbor. Format first: restaurant, express or food truck. The $301,500–$1,192,500 band in the study is too wide to underwrite without that match. Item 19 makes no representation in the study. The 10% stack — 7% royalty, 2% brand fund, 1% local — is the comparable slice and the highest among the three hot-dog brands. Training is 15 classroom and 37 on-the-job hours, the shortest combined commitment in the directory that quotes both. Short training still has to be read against the format being sold. The 2024 study count is 26, all franchised. Scale does not create a representation.

Founded and franchising in 2018, Cheyenne, Wyoming, $45,000 franchise fee.