German Doner Kebab franchise
German Doner Kebab: $690,500–$1,123,000 total investment, $30,000 franchise fee, 11% total ongoing fee. Read out of the filings.
Compiled from public filings and operator sites
The 2% local spend is waived if the store joins a GDK advertising cooperative, which can itself levy up to 2%. Royalty and brand fund may be raised annually with no cap. The Item 7 range is per outlet inside a five-outlet minimum commitment; a standalone single-store purchase is not offered. Item 1 of the same filing claimed nine outlets open by issuance, against seven at the 2023 year end reported here. Item 20 of that filing records no termination, non-renewal, reacquisition or closure in 2021, 2022 or 2023. Across four filings the disclosed performance has never covered more than the one mall unit, which by the end of 2023 was one of seven.
Fees
| Initial franchise fee | $30,000 |
|---|---|
| Royalty | 6% |
| Brand fund | 3% |
| Local advertising | 2% |
| Total ongoing | 11% of gross sales |
| Grand opening | $10,000–$15,000 |
| Transfer fee | 5% of the sale price |
| Renewal fee | 50% of the then-current franchise fee |
Opening one
| Total investment | $690,500–$1,123,000 |
|---|---|
| Typical size | 1,200–1,400 sq ft |
| Training | 40 hours classroom, 120 on the job |
| Territory | A non-exclusive protected territory with no minimum size, negotiated from demographics. Excludes campuses, sports venues, transport sites and aggregator delivery zones. |
| Initial term | 10 years |
| Renewal | One ten-year option, if the outlet is not in the bottom 10% on performance |
The system
| Format | UK kebab QSR |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Auburn Hills, MI |
| Founded | 2017 |
| Franchising since | 2017 |
| Open shops | 5, as of 2026. gdkusa.com in August 2026 still listed American Dream, Astoria, Midtown, Centereach and Frisco. Sugar Land, Bay Ridge, Westfield, Brighton Beach and Columbus Park are closed. Item 20 of the 2024 FDD (seven at year-end 2023) is not a survival record. |
| Item 20 | 7 as of 2023, of which 7 franchised and 0 company-owned. Filing snapshot, not tonight's locator. |
| Item 19 | Yes. One franchised outlet at American Dream Mall, East Rutherford, the only unit open for the full year. 2023 gross revenues $1,383,053. The 2018 and 2021 filings made no representation at all; the 2023 filing introduced one and it has covered the same single outlet ever since. |
The franchisor's own accounts
| Audited entity | GDK USA, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Fiscal year end | 31 December |
| Auditor's opinion | Unmodified, with an emphasis-of-matter paragraph |
| Auditor | signed from Cincinnati, Ohio; FY2017 and FY2018 audited by BDO USA, LLP |
| Accumulated deficit at 31 December 2024 | ($7,609,195) |
| FY2017 | $0 — period from inception on 12 September 2017 to 31 December 2017; no operations |
|---|---|
| FY2019 | ($196,539) |
| FY2020 | ($705,313) |
| FY2021 | ($1,422,432) |
| FY2022 | ($1,900,514) |
| FY2023 | ($1,729,515) — stated as $6 |
| FY2024 | ($1,513,634) |
| Total over 7 years | ($7,467,947) |
Six loss-making years out of six with figures on file, totalling roughly $7.47 million, against an accumulated deficit of $7,609,195 — so essentially every dollar the US franchisor has ever spent above revenue is still outstanding. The unaudited interim statements to 31 July 2025 in the same filing show revenue of $826,507 and the deficit at $7,923,332. The auditor's report carries an emphasis-of-matter paragraph, not a going-concern qualification: it draws attention to the liquidity footnote and states that the company "has not yet generated substantial revenue-producing activities", "expects to continue incurring operating losses until a certain volume of franchise stores are in operation to cover operating expenses", and that its ability to meet future obligations "is dependent upon continued working capital advances from its ownership group". Those advances are disclosed at $3,424,521, $4,799,661 and $5,936,215 for 2022, 2023 and 2024, with a further $1,521,725 provided after year end and booked as a related-party payable. FY2018 appears in no filing on hand, so the series has a hole in it.
Figures from FDD issued 3 September 2024 · dataset year 2024.
A larger restaurant version of German döner
German Doner Kebab is the other live German-döner franchise here. It is a UK waffle-bread restaurant inside a five-outlet minimum, from a US company that has never covered its own costs. The ranked figures come from the FDD issued 3 September 2024: a 1,200-to-1,400-square-foot restaurant. That is a development schedule, not one shop.
A later filing exists. The FDD registered with Wisconsin on 24 September 2025 as number 639752 is not the source of those ranked figures, and the numbers it changes are dated as 2025 below. A newer packet is a later moment.
The US location directory currently names American Dream, Astoria, Midtown Manhattan, Centereach and Frisco. Item 20 of the 2024 filing recorded seven outlets at year-end 2023, all franchised. Item 1 of the same document said nine were open by issuance. The locator is a third number on a third date. Street listings for Sugar Land, Bay Ridge, Westfield and Brighton Beach are a fourth: those shops are marked permanently closed. None of them is permission to pick the flattering count.
What the 2024 filing requires
The initial franchise fee is $30,000. The fee stack is 11%: 6% royalty, 3% brand fund and 2% local advertising. The local spend can be waived when a shop participates in an advertising cooperative, but the cooperative may itself levy up to 2%. The filing also allows annual increases to royalty and brand fund without a stated cap. That is why the current percentage is only the starting obligation.
Item 7 is $690,500 to $1,123,000 per outlet within the multi-unit commitment. Construction and equipment assumptions belong to this 1,200-to-1,400-square-foot format: leasehold improvements $0–$250,000, mechanical/electrical/plumbing $150,000–$175,000, fit-out $175,000–$205,000, restaurant equipment $140,000–$175,000, plus hardware, furniture, training, inventory and three months of additional funds. A standalone single-store purchase is not offered in this filing.
Training totals 40 classroom hours and 120 on the job. The initial term is ten years. Renewal is one ten-year option, conditioned in part on the outlet not ranking in the bottom 10% on performance. Renewal fee is 50% of the then-current franchise fee. Transfer fee is 5% of the sale price. Territory is a non-exclusive protected territory with no minimum size, negotiated from demographics, and it excludes campuses, sports venues, transport sites and aggregator delivery zones. Grand opening marketing is $10,000–$15,000.
GDK’s official consumer site describes open kitchens, fresh-cut meat and in-store sauce preparation. Those claims explain the customer format; the FDD explains the franchise obligation. Keeping the two source types separate makes GDK comparable without treating its marketing copy or international footprint as US disclosure evidence.
Inside the Item 7 table
The twenty line items behind the $690,500 to $1,123,000 range are where the format shows itself. Construction is split across four rows rather than one: leasehold improvements at $0 to $250,000, mechanical, electrical and plumbing at $150,000 to $175,000, fit-out materials and installation at $175,000 to $205,000, and architects’ and project manager’s fees at $30,000 to $50,000. A leasehold line running from nothing to a quarter of a million describes two very different deliveries — a space handed over largely finished, and a shell — while the services and fit-out rows carry substantial minimums either way. Restaurant equipment adds $140,000 to $175,000 on top.
Two smaller rows repay attention. Hardware and software runs $27,500 to $30,000, by some distance the largest technology line among the Item 7 records held here, and a fixed commitment made before the restaurant takes an order. The property agent line is printed at $0 in both columns. The filing does not say who finds and negotiates the site, or on whose account.
The additional-funds line covers approximately three months at $15,000 to $20,000, against a total reaching $1,123,000. That proportion is the assumption in this table worth pressing hardest. Three months is the franchisor’s premise about the ramp, not a finding about how long a new restaurant of this size takes to reach a steady state, and the two should not be confused in a cash plan.
Five filings, and an Item 19 that was withdrawn
Five GDK disclosure documents are on file: 7 February 2018, 19 August 2021, 20 July 2023, 3 September 2024 and the document registered 24 September 2025. Read in order they answer a question a single filing cannot: what the franchisor’s disclosure has been doing over time, rather than what it says today. The answer changes direction twice.
The 2018 and 2021 filings make no financial performance representation at all, using the standard formula — “We do not make any representations about a franchisee’s future financial performance or the past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets.” The 2023 filing introduces one. The 2024 filing keeps it. The 2025 filing removes it entirely.
The 2025 Item 19 consists of the standard explanatory paragraph the Franchise Rule prescribes, followed directly by the sentence “Other than the preceding financial performance representation, we do not make any financial performance representations.” There is no preceding representation in that document. No table, no measurement period and no figures appear anywhere in the Item, so the sentence is vestigial wording carried over from the previous year’s filing, which did contain one. Reports under the 2025 document are directed to Daniel Bunce in Dallas, Texas.
A conclusion about what changed is only as good as the most recent filing in hand.
One outlet, two measurement periods
Both representations that did exist cover the same single outlet: the franchised restaurant at F1 American Dream Way, East Rutherford, New Jersey, which the 2024 filing describes as having opened on 21 August 2021 and as “the only open GDK Outlet for the entire 12 months ended December 31, 2023.” Each filing says that because only one outlet is disclosed it has given no high, low, median or average figure — there is nothing to take a median of.
Set the two full years beside each other and the arithmetic is the franchisor’s own: gross revenues fell by roughly $108,000, transactions rose by roughly 6,000, and the average ticket fell by about $4. Nothing in either filing explains that shape. A single revenue line would have shown a decline, a single transaction count would have shown growth, and it takes both tables to see that a mall restaurant served more customers for less money per visit. The 2024 document also restates the fourth quarter of 2021 for the same restaurant at $409,279 on 17,612 transactions, an average ticket of $23.24.
The population is the other half of the point. When the 2023 filing disclosed that one outlet, one outlet was most of the US system. When the 2024 filing disclosed the same outlet again, Item 20 of that same document put seven franchised restaurants on the ground at the end of 2023 — two in New Jersey, three in New York and two in Texas. The disclosed unit went from being the system to being one seventh of it while the representation stayed exactly the same size. A franchisor may only report on outlets that were open for the full period, so the sample’s share of the system shrank between two documents, and then the sample was withdrawn altogether.
The franchisor’s own accounts
The audited statements above this note are the most consequential pages in the GDK file, and they are the pages a reader is likeliest to skip. Six fiscal years appear across the filings held here and every one of them is a loss: $196,539 for FY2019, $705,313 for FY2020, $1,422,432 for FY2021, $1,900,514 for FY2022, $1,729,515 for FY2023 and $1,513,634 for FY2024. That totals $7,467,947, against an accumulated deficit of $7,609,195 at 31 December 2024 — so essentially nothing has ever been earned back. FY2018 appears in no filing on hand, which is why this is stated as six years on file rather than as every year since the company’s formation on 12 September 2017. FY2019 and FY2020 are read from the 2021 filing, FY2021 and FY2022 from the 2023 filing, FY2023 from the 2024 and 2025 filings, and FY2024 from the 2025 filing. The unaudited interim statements in that last document, covering 1 January to 31 July 2025, show total revenue of $826,507 and the deficit at $7,923,332.
The US company has never covered its own costs. The owners are keeping it alive. The auditor left the opinion unmodified and wrote an “Emphasis of Matter” that says so. In the 2025 filing the paragraph states that GDK USA, Inc. “has not yet generated substantial revenue-producing activities and is subject to all of the risks and uncertainties that startup franchisor companies typically face”, that it “expects to continue incurring operating losses until a certain volume of franchise stores are in operation to cover operating expenses”, and that “the ability of GDK USA, Inc., to meet its future obligations is dependent upon continued working capital advances from its ownership group.” The same paragraph appears in the 2023, 2024 and 2025 filings.
The Risk and Uncertainties note names who writes the cheques: “continued working capital advances from its stockholder, GDKI and financial support from Hero Brands, Ltd.” Those advances stood at $3,424,521 at the end of 2022, $4,799,661 at the end of 2023 and $5,936,215 at the end of 2024, and after 31 December 2024 GDKI provided a further $1,521,725, recorded as a related-party payable. Management’s plan for 2025 “is expected to allow the Company to continue for a period not less than one year past the audited financial statements issuance date”. If those advances stop, the franchisee has no claim on them. The opinion is unmodified; the emphasis-of-matter paragraph is still the auditor pointing at owner cash and expected further losses. What the filings say about the franchisor is the Item 21 read of the same file.
Two documentary details belong with the figures. FY2017 and FY2018 were audited by BDO USA, LLP; from FY2019 the reports are signed from Cincinnati, Ohio, by a firm whose name sits in a letterhead image, with report dates of 20 July 2023, 27 August 2024 and 5 September 2025. And the FY2023 accumulated deficit is printed as $6,095,843 in the 2024 filing and $6,095,561 in the 2025 filing, a $282 difference in the same fiscal year across two documents — trivial in itself, and a demonstration of why overlapping years are worth lining up rather than assumed identical.
A plan in the 2021 filing, an outcome in the 2025 one
A note in the 19 August 2021 document says the company “has two franchised locations in operation as of December 31, 2020”, that it “plans to have an additional five franchised stores opened by December 31, 2021”, that it is “actively working with existing franchisees on the development of 66 additional stores”, and that after year end it signed a development agreement for 15 stores in the Houston metropolitan area.
Item 20 of the 2025 filing puts US franchised outlets at seven at the end of 2024. Sixty-six stores in development and a fifteen-store metropolitan agreement in 2021, against seven outlets four years later. A development plan is a plan. The comparison is only available to a reader who has the superseded document.
Where the outlet tables disagree with themselves
Item 20 of the 2021 filing reports zero franchised outlets at both the start and the end of 2018, 2019 and 2020. The note to the audited financial statements bound into that same document says two franchised locations were in operation as of 31 December 2020. One of those is wrong, or the two use different definitions of an outlet, and the document does not say which. It is the clearest reason in this file to read Item 20 and Item 21 against each other instead of trusting either alone.
The 2025 filing has an arithmetic defect in the same item. Table 1’s “Franchised” row shows 2024 starting at seven and ending at seven, a net change of zero, with company-owned outlets at zero throughout, while the same table’s “Total Outlets” row and Table 3 show seven rising to nine, a net change of plus two. A total cannot move while every component holds still. Elsewhere those tables report US franchised outlets of one for 2022, seven for 2023 and nine for 2024, zero terminations, non-renewals, reacquisitions and ceased operations throughout, and one signed but unopened agreement in New York as of 31 December 2024.
What Item 20 covers, and what closures need instead
Item 20 of the 3 September 2024 filing covers 2021, 2022 and 2023 and records zero terminations, zero non-renewals, zero reacquisitions and zero outlets ceasing operations, with no company-owned outlets in any year and franchised outlets at year end of 1, 1 and 7. Table 5 projects two signed agreements not yet open, both in New York.
Those zeros mean something narrower than they look. Item 20 covers outlets of the US franchisor through the last completed fiscal year, so even the 2025 filing says nothing about calendar 2025 or 2026, and it says nothing at all about the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the Gulf or Sweden, where the parent and its affiliates operate the large majority of the estate. Closures outside that window and that geography have to be established elsewhere.
The same 2024 filing’s subsequent-events note then named two 2024 openings — Bay Ridge in February and Brighton Beach in June — and one US closure already on the books: Columbus Park, Brooklyn, in March 2024. By August 2026 the public listings for four later units read permanently closed:
Item 20 through year-end 2023 recorded zero cessations. The shops the subsequent-events footnote then added as openings are among the ones now closed. A five-outlet minimum sold against that history is a development schedule pointed at a map that has already shrunk.
Closures in other countries are a separate file. The Courier reported that the Stirling GDK on Murray Place, opened in 2022, closed permanently after a “temporary” closure, was delisted from the GDK website and was being marketed to let by TSA Property Consultants, with GDK’s chief operating officer Sofia Dimen quoted apologising for the closure and saying the company was working with the landlord. That is a named, dated, attributable closure of one unit, and third-party directories described the system as “over 140” and “147” locations during the same period, so it sits against a large base. A reported Brighton, UK closure was checked and not substantiated — the North Street unit was still listed with current hours in mid-2025 and carried a customer review dated July 2026 — and it is therefore not treated as a closure here. Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, is a different shop, and it is closed.
An unregistered primary trademark, on the cover page
The state-mandated special risks at the front of the 2024 filing include, as item 5: “Unregistered Trademark. The primary trademark that you will use in your business is not federally registered. If the franchisor’s right to use this trademark in your area is challenged, you may have to identify your business and its products or services with a name that differs from that used by other franchisees or the franchisor. This change can be expensive and may reduce brand recognition of the products or services you offer.”
That is the franchisor’s own disclosure, and its placement is the point: a cover-page special risk is what a state regulator requires a prospect to see before reading the document, not a sentence buried in Item 13. A ten-year agreement whose signage, packaging and menu boards carry the mark is a different asset depending on the answer, and the current status of any application is a matter of the public USPTO record with a date on it rather than something to be inferred from a filing.
The parent, the address and the definition of “you”
The 2024 filing’s Item 1 describes a parent, GDK International, Ltd., a Scottish company formed on 2 December 2016, which with its affiliates franchises 170 outlets across the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Sweden, with five opening soon and fifteen under development. In the United States the same item says nine outlet franchises are open and one is under development, against the seven at year-end 2023 in Item 20 of that same document. Two dates, two statements, one filing — and the international 170 is not a US count under any reading.
The definition in the front of that document sets the terms for everything else: “‘You’ means a person who buys the right to operate 5 or more GDK Outlets from us.” The Item 7 range is per outlet inside that minimum, and the disclosed performance covered one restaurant. A buyer was therefore reading one unit’s two years as evidence for a commitment of at least five, and under the 2025 document is reading no disclosed performance at all against the same minimum.
The franchisor’s address has moved twice across the documents that matter. The 2023 filing directs performance questions to Nigel Belton at 148 Hubbard Street, Concord, Massachusetts. The 2024 filing gives the principal business address as 3968 Forester Blvd., Auburn Hills, Michigan. The 2025 filing gives 11015 Beauty Lane, Dallas, Texas, a trade name of “Doner Kebab Outlet” and Daniel Bunce as Global Chief Operating Officer. A relocated franchisor is an unremarkable event and a useful one to notice, since it tells a buyer that the support structure they are being sold has been reorganised more than once during the period the disclosed figures cover.
A franchisor that operates nothing itself
Item 20 records seven outlets at year-end 2023, all franchised and none company-owned. Set beside a five-outlet minimum commitment, that produces an unusual shape: the US entity’s entire disclosed operating base sits with franchisees, and a new buyer is asked to commit to a development schedule comparable in size to the system that already exists.
Obligation and count therefore have to be read together. A five-outlet commitment is a sequence of sites, leases, buildouts and openings staged over time, and the Item 7 range is per outlet inside it. The 40 classroom and 120 on-the-job hours in Item 11 describe entry into the system, not the management layer a multi-unit developer needs by a third or fourth opening. What the schedule requires, what follows if a site slips, and what the franchisor may do with territory that goes undeveloped are Item 12 and Item 17 questions, and on this row they carry more weight than the headline rates.
Neighbours on the aisle
Döner Haus’s 850–1,200-square-foot imbiss, The Halal Guys’ platter system and Doner Shack are different packets. Founded 2017, seven US franchised units at year-end 2023, GDK is a small US count for a consumer brand that is easy to file as “established.” The emerging versus established essay is the place to keep seven from being mistaken for 323. The Döner Haus versus GDK compare is the pair: a compact imbiss against a restaurant inside a five-outlet minimum.
The take
German Doner Kebab is a restaurant-and-minimum packet. The 2024 filing that ranks here still carries the five-outlet minimum, an 11% stack with an uncapped right to raise royalty and brand fund, and $690,500–$1,123,000 per outlet for 1,200–1,400 square feet. Item 20 in that document is seven franchised outlets at year-end 2023; Item 1 of the same filing said nine were open by issuance; the 2025 filing’s Table 1 contradicts its total row for 2024. The Item 19 covering the American Dream unit was added, kept, then withdrawn. Six years on file, every one a loss, $7,467,947 in total, against an accumulated deficit of $7,609,195 at 31 December 2024. The US company has never covered its own costs. The owners had advanced $5,936,215 by that date, plus $1,521,725 after it. If those advances stop, the franchisee has no claim on them. Stirling closed. Brighton, UK, was not substantiated as closed. Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Bay Ridge, Westfield and Sugar Land are. Columbus Park is in the 2024 FDD’s own subsequent-events note. What successive filings reveal is how to read the five documents against each other.