Shah's Halal Food franchise

Brand footprint is not franchise footprint

Shah’s Halal Food is a New York-area chicken-and-rice system founded in 2005 and based in Amityville, New York. The FDD issued 10 April 2024 records 58 outlets at year-end 2023. Fourteen were company-owned and 44 operated under license agreements; Item 20 says no franchised outlets were operating.

That distinction prevents a common overstatement. The row is a 58-outlet brand footprint, not evidence of 58 franchisees operating under the agreement being offered. Shah’s current company history claims a much larger international footprint in 2026. It is a later operator-reported count with different geography and possibly different agreement types, so it does not replace the 2023 FDD snapshot.

Certification, fees and Item 7

Shah’s publishes dated halal certificates on its official site. Those documents support the operator’s certification claim; the FDD separately governs the franchise comparison. Keeping the two source types distinct avoids treating “halal” as either a cuisine synonym or a financial credential.

The comparable fee stack is 7%: 5% royalty, 1% brand fund and 1% local advertising. The 2024 franchise fee is $30,000. Item 7 prints a total range of $197,000 to $405,000 for 1,200 to 2,000 square feet, the lowest disclosed band in the live set. Its fifteen high-column line items sum to $410,000. This directory preserves the filing’s printed $405,000 total and reports the $5,000 discrepancy instead of silently correcting an issued document. Grand opening is $1,000–$5,000. Working capital in the line-item table is three months.

Item 19, training, term and territory

There is no Item 19 financial performance representation. The filing states that none is made. Training is 19 classroom hours and 85 on the job. The initial term is ten years with one additional ten-year term. Transfer fee is 50% of the then-current franchise fee. Territory extends up to five miles by driving distance and shrinks in dense cities; non-traditional sites are excluded.

The combination of licensed growth, no operating franchises in the source year and no Item 19 makes the current franchise agreement more important than the visibility of the consumer brand. Validation calls to licensees are not the same exercise as calling franchisees on an Item 20 list.

What the line items describe

The fifteen Item 7 lines behind the printed $197,000 to $405,000 total describe a modest build, and the modesty concentrates in one place. Build-out and construction run $80,000 to $160,000 — the lowest construction ceiling among the Item 7 records held here — with a fixture package of $30,000 to $50,000, against a disclosed format of 1,200 to 2,000 square feet. A construction assumption that low usually implies a second-generation food space rather than a raw shell, and establishing which the franchisor has in mind is the first question the table raises.

Two lines behave unlike the rest. Travel to attend training runs $2,000 to $20,000, a tenfold band on a single row, which is the shape that appears when training is delivered in one place and buyers come from everywhere. Signage runs $10,000 to $28,000, wide for a category usually specified tightly, and worth asking about against landlord and municipal requirements rather than brand standards alone.

Additional funds cover three months at $10,000 to $30,000, and grand opening is $1,000 to $5,000, the lowest opening-marketing requirement disclosed here. A low printed figure still has to be read as opening marketing: it is what fills a new store’s first weeks, and a franchisor requiring very little of it leaves both the judgement and the spending to the operator.

The $5,000 gap between the high column and the printed total deserves one further note. Nothing in the document identifies which line the difference sits on, so it cannot be allocated. The printed $405,000 is what the filing and its cover page both state, and that is the figure carried here.

A system that grew by licence

Fourteen company outlets and 44 licensed ones, with Item 20 stating that no franchised outlets were operating, is an unusual composition for a 58-unit brand. The row records no year in which franchising began, which is consistent with a programme that had not yet produced an operating unit when the 10 April 2024 document was issued.

Maryland later said those licenses were franchises. On 31 October 2024 the Maryland Securities Commissioner found that Shah’s Halal Food Partners had sold license agreements — mark, control of recipes, suppliers and signage, required fees — without registering and without giving an FDD. Four Maryland outlets, 2021–2023. Rescission was offered. The consent order is public and is disclosed in Item 3. The Virginia State Corporation Commission entered a settlement order against Shah’s Halal Franchising, Inc. on 7 August 2025 (SEC-2025-00016).

The practical effect is that the 44 licensees sit outside the franchise disclosure entirely. Their agreement is a different contract on different terms and the FDD does not describe it, so nothing about their fees, obligations, territory or support can be read across to the franchise on offer. They are not an Item 20 validation sample either: a call to a licensee yields useful information about the brand and the food and almost none about the agreement being signed.

That leaves an unusual diligence problem. There are no franchisees to call, the company stores are run by the franchisor, and Item 19 states expressly that no financial performance representation is made — an affirmative statement rather than a blank. A buyer would be first, or among the first, operating under this agreement, so the work shifts onto the document itself, onto the franchisor’s own record, and onto what 19 classroom and 85 on-the-job hours actually deliver to an operator with no franchisee peer group to learn from.

Territory measured by driving distance

Territory extends up to five miles by driving distance, shrinking in dense cities, with non-traditional sites excluded. Driving distance rather than radius is the only such measure on the table, and the difference is real: five miles of road in a city divided by a river, a rail cutting or a limited-access highway encloses a very different population from five miles as the crow flies. Whether the measure runs in a buyer’s favour depends entirely on local geography, which makes it a question to settle on a map before signing rather than a line to accept as standard.

Neighbours on the aisle

Shah’s is the low Item 7 neighbor in Mediterranean and halal and the licensed-footprint side of Halal Guys versus Shah’s. The Halal Guys’ 88-franchised-unit platter system and The Great Greek’s 35-year grill are different packets. The 58-outlet count is licensed, not a franchise track record. Source: FDD issued 10 April 2024; 2024 study.

The take

Shah’s is the low printed investment neighbor in this aisle, and that number describes a licensed restaurant, not a franchise track record. The 2024 filing said no franchises were operating; 44 of 58 outlets were licensed and 14 company-owned. Maryland treated those licenses as unregistered franchise sales. Those licensees are not a franchisee validation sample for the agreement on offer. Item 7 prints $197,000–$405,000; the high column of the line items sums to $410,000, a $5,000 gap against the printed total. There is no Item 19. Stack is 7%. Training is 19 classroom and 85 on the job. Term is ten years. Territory shrinks in cities and excludes non-traditional sites. Grand opening is $1,000–$5,000. The 1,200–2,000-square-foot assumption is a full-sized restaurant, not a cart. International counts on the company history page do not replace the 2023 Item 20 snapshot.