Doner Shack franchise
Doner Shack: $498,000–$1,007,000 total investment, $40,000 franchise fee, 10% total ongoing fee. Read out of the filings.
Compiled from public filings and operator sites
Began offering US franchises on 5 September 2024 and had no US outlet at any point in 2022, 2023 or 2024; the affiliates operate three restaurants in the United Kingdom with four more in development. Item 13 discloses no federal registration for the DONER SHACK mark, an application pending since 3 May 2024, and the risk that a franchisee may have to change to an alternative mark if the right to use it is challenged. Item 1 names one affiliate as the owner of the marks and Item 13 names a different one as the applicant. The brand fund is capped at 2% rather than fixed, so the fee stack shown here is the maximum the documents permit. Item 11 gives training as a range, 39 to 52 classroom hours and 120 to 160 on the job; the figures here are the upper end. The brand's own franchise site listed US enquiries as on hold when it was last checked. As of 2026 it is not selling US franchises. A 2025 document and an active sales push are not the same thing.
Fees
| Initial franchise fee | $40,000 |
|---|---|
| Royalty | 6% |
| Brand fund | Up to 2% |
| Local advertising | 2% |
| Total ongoing | 10% of gross sales |
| Grand opening | $10,000 |
| Transfer fee | $10,000 |
Opening one
| Total investment | $498,000–$1,007,000 |
|---|---|
| Typical size | 1,200–1,800 sq ft |
| Training | 52 hours classroom, 160 on the job |
| Territory | Protected but expressly not exclusive. No minimum geographic size; boundaries drawn case by case from the target demographic and described by zip codes, streets or landmarks. |
| Initial term | 10 years |
| Renewal | Two successive five-year terms, subject to a default record test |
The system
| Format | UK kebab brand |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Miami Beach, FL |
| Founded | 2020 |
| Franchising since | 2024 |
| Item 20 | 0 as of 2024, of which 0 franchised and 0 company-owned. Filing snapshot, not tonight's locator. |
| Item 19 | No financial performance representation. |
The franchisor's own accounts
| Audited entity | Doner Shack Franchising, LLC |
|---|---|
| Fiscal year end | 31 December |
| Auditor's opinion | Unmodified |
| Members' equity at 31 December 2024 | $163,939 |
| FY2024 | ($90,719) |
|---|---|
| Total over 1 year | ($90,719) |
One audited year for a franchisor organised in November 2020, which is the least history any brand in the set offers. The $90,719 loss belongs to an entity with no US outlets at all, so it is overhead against a US offering that had not yet sold anything; the operating business is three company-owned restaurants in the United Kingdom held by a different affiliate whose statements are not in the document.
Figures from FDD issued 29 April 2025 · dataset year 2025.
A current filing, no US shops, and no US sales in 2026
Doner Shack is a UK kebab brand whose US franchisor, Doner Shack Franchising, LLC, is a Delaware limited liability company organised on 24 November 2020 with its principal US address in Miami Beach, Florida. The FDD issued 29 April 2025 states that the franchisor “began offering franchises as of September 5, 2024.” Every figure on this row is read out of that document.
As of 2026 it is not selling US franchises. The franchise site says US enquiries are on hold. The same page lists 150 India master-franchise deals as signed, with area developers in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The 2025 FDD is still the last US disclosure on file, and it describes a filing rather than an active US sales push. A signed unit in Prosper, Texas, is on the consumer location page as coming soonish. The facade is up. The interior is dark.
What sits behind that offering is the unusual part. Item 20 records zero franchised and zero company-owned outlets at both the start and the end of each of 2022, 2023 and 2024, with the footnote that the franchisor does “not currently have any U.S. operations,” while its affiliates operate three restaurants in the United Kingdom and have four more UK franchises in active development. There are no transfers, terminations, non-renewals or closures in those three years for the arithmetically simple reason that there was nothing to transfer, terminate or close. Reading this row is reading a complete set of 2025 terms attached to a US system that has not opened a door and, in 2026, is not selling one.
What the 29 April 2025 filing requires
The initial franchise fee is $40,000, discounted by 20% on a first franchise for an honorably discharged veteran. The royalty is 6% of Gross Sales, payable weekly rather than monthly, which is a cash-flow difference before it is a cost difference. The brand fund is capped at up to 2% and a 2% local advertising spend is required, so the 10% shown on the table is the maximum ongoing percentage the document permits rather than a rate the franchisor has committed to charging in full. Grand opening advertising is $10,000 and the transfer fee is $10,000.
Item 7 puts a single restaurant at $498,000 to $1,007,000, assuming premises of 1,200 to 1,800 square feet. The same item separately discloses a three-restaurant development agreement at $578,000 to $1,087,000. Those two ranges are close enough at both ends that a range for three restaurants that starts $80,000 above the range for one does not describe three buildouts. The initial term is ten years with two successive five-year renewal terms. Territory is protected but expressly not exclusive, with no minimum geographic size and boundaries drawn case by case. Training is disclosed as a range — 39 to 52 classroom hours and 120 to 160 on the job — and this directory carries the upper end of both, which is why the training ranking shows 52 and 160 rather than a midpoint.
No Item 19, and no US history to build one from
No financial performance representation was located in this filing. On most rows in this directory an Item 19 absence is a disclosure choice made by a franchisor that has operating outlets it could have written about. Here the absence sits on top of an Item 20 that reports no US outlet at any point in the three years it covers, so there is no US operating record for a representation to describe. The three UK restaurants are affiliate operations in another country under other conditions, and the filing does not present them as performance evidence for a US buyer.
That produces an underwriting problem with no shortcut in the document. A candidate has an investment range, a fee stack and a term, and nothing disclosed about what a Doner Shack restaurant takes in. By Item 19 records the absence and stops there; the only ways past it are the franchisor’s own answers, a trade-area study the buyer commissions, and whatever the UK operation will say about a format that has not been run in the United States.
The trademark, as the filing left it and as the register now stands
This is the field on the row that has moved since the document was issued, and both halves of it belong here with their dates attached.
What the 29 April 2025 filing says. Item 13 names DONER SHACK as the principal mark, and its registration table carries no registration number and no registration date. It gives “n/a, Serial No. 79/411,340” and “N/A, pending with a filing date of May 3, 2024.” The filing then states the position plainly:
The same Item states that there is no litigation pending over the marks, that the franchisor is “not aware of any superior rights in, or infringing uses of” them, that there are no effective material determinations of the USPTO, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, any state trademark administrator or any court adverse to its rights, and that no opposition or cancellation proceeding is pending. That was the disclosed position on 29 April 2025, and every candidate who received the document during the year that followed received that risk along with it.
What the public register shows now. The USPTO’s Trademark Status and Document Retrieval status view for serial 79/411,340, retrieved 16 August 2026, records a US registration: number 8,290,085, on the Principal Register, issued 9 June 2026, status LIVE/REGISTRATION/Issued and Active, across all five classes the application covered — 021, 035, 039, 043 and 045, each of them active. The mark is the stylized DONER SHACK wording in red with a polygon and bird device, and it reached the United States through the Madrid Protocol under section 66(a) from international registration 1,826,161, filed 3 May 2024.
The prosecution history between those two dates is on the same record. A non-final action was written 9 December 2024 and mailed 20 December 2024, recorded as “NON-FINAL ACTION MAILED - REFUSAL SENT TO IB”, and processed by the International Bureau on 10 January 2025. A response to the office action was received 5 March 2025. A letter of suspension issued 19 March 2025, and the suspension was checked on 20 September 2025 and again on 20 March 2026. The application was approved for publication 25 March 2026, published for opposition 21 April 2026, with notification of possible opposition sent 4 May 2026. No opposition was filed, and registration issued 9 June 2026. A change of owner was received from the International Bureau on 23 July 2026.
Two things must not be read into that sequence. The office action documents themselves are not in hand, so the grounds of the refusal are not stated here and should not be assumed: a non-final action can issue for reasons ranging from a specimen or classification problem to a conflict, and the public record does not say which applies. And a refusal that is answered and withdrawn is not a denial. The application was refused on a non-final basis, suspended for a year, and then registered — that is the whole of what the record says.
The disclaimer is the part that will be missed. The registration carries a disclaimer of “DONER SHACK”, which means the registrant claims no exclusive right in those words apart from the mark as shown. What is protected is the composite logo. So the honest summary is not that the brand now owns the name: a five-class registration issued for the design while the words themselves were given up, which is a materially narrower right than a registration number suggests to a reader who does not open the record.
A separate word-mark application is suspended. Serial 99/401,785 covers DONER SHACK in standard characters in classes 035 and 043, filed 19 September 2025, with “Shack” disclaimed. It drew a non-final action on 20 February 2026, a response was received 11 March 2026, and a letter of suspension issued 7 April 2026. It stands at LIVE/APPLICATION/Under Examination with no registration. The attempt to register the words as words has therefore not succeeded and is on hold.
What all of that changes is the shape of the due diligence rather than the verdict. A ten-year agreement whose signage, packaging and menu boards carry a mark is a different asset depending on what exactly is registered and by whom, and the answer here is “the logo, in five classes, with the wording disclaimed, owned by an entity the register recorded a change to in July 2026.” The FDD’s own risk language remains the language to quote back, because it describes the position for the whole period the document was being handed to prospects, and the current document should be read to see whether Item 13 has been updated to match the register.
Two affiliates and one set of marks
Item 1 and Item 13 do not describe the trademark ownership the same way. Item 1 says the affiliate Haus Hospitality Ltd., a UK company formed in November 2022, owns the Doner Shack trademarks described in Item 13 and licenses them to the franchisor. Item 13 says that the affiliate Franchise Brands International Inc. — the British Virgin Islands parent, formed in February 2021 — “is in the process of applying for registration” of the primary word and design marks. Both entities give the same address, 1 Eagle Street in Glasgow.
That is a question to ask rather than a finding to publish, and the register has since made it sharper rather than settling it: the status view for serial 79/411,340 records a change of owner received from the International Bureau on 23 July 2026, after registration. Which entity holds the registration today, which entity is the applicant on the suspended standard-character application, and what happens to the franchisor’s licence — and therefore to a franchisee’s right to use the name — if ownership moves between affiliates or if either entity changes hands. Related-party licensing of a brand’s own marks is ordinary in franchising. Two items of the same document naming two different affiliates, against a register that has recorded an ownership change, is something a reader should have resolved in writing before signing or paying anything.
A 2025 filing is not a 2026 sales push
The brand’s own franchise site says US enquiries are on hold. As of 2026 it is not selling US franchises. Set that beside the filing: an FDD issued 29 April 2025, an offering that opened on paper on 5 September 2024, an Item 20 showing no US outlet in three years, a signed Prosper storefront that is not published as open, and India master deals listed as signed on the same site that paused US sales.
None of those things contradicts the others. A franchisor can leave a disclosure on the shelf after it stops selling. The 2025 document is still the last US filing. It is not proof that anyone in the United States is being taken through the process.
Neighbours on the aisle
Doner Shack’s Item 20 is a disclosure of nothing having happened yet in this country. A zero unit count keeps the brand off the size ranking entirely while it still appears on entry cost, footprint, training and the fee ranking, because those fields are disclosed and the outlets are not. German Doner Kebab’s 1,200-to-1,400-square-foot mall restaurant sits inside a five-outlet minimum; Doner Shack’s 1,200-to-1,800-square-foot assumption is a larger box than its own category’s compact end. The German döner essay is where the category count is kept honest. Source: FDD issued 29 April 2025.
The take
Doner Shack has a 2025 US filing, no US outlets, and as of 2026 is not selling franchises. Item 20 is zero franchised and zero company-owned outlets at the start and end of 2022, 2023 and 2024, with three UK affiliate restaurants and four UK franchises in development. The UK estate is context, not system size. There is no Item 19. The fee stack is a 6% royalty payable weekly, a brand fund of up to 2% and a required 2% local spend, so the 10% on the table is the maximum the document permits. Item 7 is $498,000–$1,007,000 for 1,200–1,800 square feet; a three-restaurant range sits at $578,000–$1,087,000. Term is ten years with two five-year renewals. Territory is protected but not exclusive, with no minimum size. Training is 39–52 classroom hours and 120–160 on the job.
The 29 April 2025 filing described the principal mark as unregistered. The public register does not: registration 8,290,085 issued on 9 June 2026 for the design in five classes with the words “DONER SHACK” disclaimed. A separate standard-character application, serial 99/401,785, has been suspended since 7 April 2026. Item 1 and Item 13 name different affiliates as mark owners, and the register recorded a change of owner on 23 July 2026. The filing’s own risk language about operating under an unregistered mark is still the language that circulated with that document. The brand’s franchise site listed US enquiries as on hold when last checked. As of 2026 the brand is not selling US franchises. A signed Prosper facade is not an open restaurant. A 2025 filing, a 2026 sales stop, and India deals on the same hold page are three different facts.