Wages as a share of sales, from 112 franchise FDDs
Updated 16 October 2026
Wages as a share of sales is wages and payroll taxes divided by sales for the same period. One hundred twelve of the 431 brands in Averan's library publish it in their 2026 Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs). The FDD is the document a franchisor gives a buyer before a sale. The median is 31.73% of sales. This page shows how that share moves with sales inside one brand.
Wages by brand
| Brand | Wages as a share of sales |
|---|---|
| School of Rock | 14.7% |
| Mathnasium | 20.6% |
| i9 Sports | 28.3% |
| The Goddard School | 40.1% |
| Camp Bow Wow | 42.6% |
| Dogtopia | 44.5% |
| The Joint Chiropractic | 47.9% |
| Hand & Stone, 134 spas reporting expenses | 50.3% |
The eight brands run from 14.7% to 50.3%, a range of 35.6 points. Service brands that staff every open hour sit at the top of the range.
On $1,000,000 of sales, School of Rock's 14.7% is $147,000 of wages and Hand & Stone's 50.3% is $503,000. The $356,000 difference comes from how many staff hours each sale needs. Compare a location with its own brand's figure before the library median.
More wage dollars, a lower share
A location must staff a set number of hours to open at all. That staffing does not fall when sales fall. So the wage share is higher at lower sales, even where the wage dollars are lower.
Goddard's top quarter of schools by revenue averaged $3,739,843 and paid $1,367,956 in wages, 36.6% of revenue. Its bottom quarter averaged $1,522,695 and paid $643,618, 42.3% of revenue. The top quarter pays $724,338 more in wage dollars and 5.7 points less as a share.
The same staffing at two sales levels
Front-desk and manager hours are set by opening hours. Treatment, class or care hours rise with bookings. The first group is a fixed cost and the second moves with sales.
Woodhouse Spa's four company-owned spas paid 44.1% of sales in personnel cost on average sales of $3,029,450. The same 44.1% applied to a bottom-quartile franchised spa's $1,318,522 is $581,468. The front desk and manager hours in that figure are the same at both spas, so they take a larger share at the lower sales.
Other charges that rise as a share at lower sales
Some brand charges carry a dollar minimum. Below a set sales level, the minimum applies and the charge takes a larger share of sales, in the same way fixed staffing does.
Club Pilates requires local advertising of $1,500 a month or 2% of the prior month's sales, whichever is greater. The $18,000 yearly minimum equals 2% at $900,000 of sales. At $600,000 of sales, the same $18,000 is 3% of sales.
Your brand against the library median
The library median of 31.73% comes from 112 brands with different staffing models. Each brand's own figure is the closer comparison. The median serves owners whose brand leaves wages out of its FDD.
i9 Sports reports wages at 28.3% of sales on average sales of $514,066, which is $145,481 a year. At the library median of 31.73%, the same sales would carry $163,113 of wages. The $17,632 difference is the gap between i9 Sports' staffing model and the library median.
Payroll as a cash outflow
Payroll leaves the bank account on fixed dates, every week or every two weeks. Sales arrive on their own schedule. A month with three payroll dates takes more cash than a month with two, at the same wage rate.
The average Goddard School pays $968,761 a year in wages, or $80,730 a month. A bottom-quarter Goddard School pays $643,618, or $53,635 a month. Either school's cash forecast carries payroll on its pay dates at those amounts.
Reading your own wage figure
- Split wages into hours that are fixed by opening hours and hours that move with bookings.
- Compare total wages with your brand's FDD figure for locations of your sales level.
- Track sales per staff hour each month, alongside the wage share.
- Check the fixed hours against the brand's minimum staffing rules in the operations manual.
The Joint's 492 clinics with a profit and loss averaged $578,201 in sales with wages at 47.9%. That is $23,080 of wages a month at the average of those clinics. A Joint owner compares the month's payroll with that figure and with the month's own sales.
What this means for an owner
The wage share is wages divided by sales, so it moves with either number. At Goddard, the top quarter pays more wage dollars and a smaller share than the bottom quarter. Fixed staffing hours, and charges with dollar minimums, take a larger share as sales fall. An owner splits fixed hours from booked hours, compares wages with locations at the same sales level, and tracks sales per staff hour each month.
Check one location
The Franchise Numbers Check is a free tool on this site. It takes one location's figures and sets them against the brand data Averan has published.
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