Breakdown

Waxing the City franchise unit economics

Q: How much does a Waxing the City franchise make?

The average Waxing the City unit reported $478,025 of revenue in the 2026 FDD, and the median reported $457,222. The filing discloses revenue and not profit, so what an owner keeps depends on the cost structure set out below. Fees come off the top first, at about 8% of sales across royalty, brand fund and the rest of the stack. Revenue is not income. Rent, wages, cost of goods and the franchise fees all come out before an owner is paid,

Waxing the City franchisees run a four to six room waxing studio selling body and facial waxing, retail product and the Club Orange monthly membership. 138 studios that traded the whole of 2025 averaged $478,025 of sales on 569 unique customers a month and a $63 ticket. The membership is 38.3% of system revenue and it is where the quartiles separate. 40.4% of revenue at the top quartile against 29.3% at the bottom.

By Scott Engler · Averan Advisors · Source: Waxing the City Franchisor LLC, 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) · Updated 22 September 2026

Where these figures come from

Primary source: Waxing the City Franchisor LLC, 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document
Items read: Items 5 and 6 for fees; Item 7 for cost to open; Item 19 for sales and any profit figure; Item 20 for the location count
Population: 138 of 167 locations
Our calculations: Marked on the page with an asterisk. Method
Last reviewed: 26 September 2026

Disclosure-based. Not a forecast, not an offer to sell a franchise, and not advice.

Key idea

The highest-selling studios bills $1,159,131 and the lowest-selling $60,168, 19.3 times, while the average ticket across the whole system runs from $48 to $84. Price accounts for almost zero of that range. Club Orange does: the membership is 40.4% of revenue in the top quartile and 29.3% in the bottom. Subscription revenue varies 5.3 times between them against 3.3 times on everything else.

Franchised studios (end 2025)167

Average sales$478,025

Club Orange share of revenue38.3%

Total investment$339,945–$646,195

Club Orange is 40.4% of top-quarter revenue and 29.3% of bottom-quarter revenue. $318,863 against $59,909, a 5.3 times gap, where the rest of the business varies 3.3 times.
Franchise fees cost 11.5% of revenue in the top quartile and 21.5% in the bottom. $27,588 of it is flat: $18,000 of required local advertising and a $9,588 technology fee.
The bottom quartile sits $273,449 below the all-studio average. 84 more tickets a week at the filed $63 ticket, or 325 more unique customers a month.
Rent and CAM at the filed system averages cost $54,384 a year on a 1,200 square foot studio. 26.6% of bottom-quarter revenue, against 11.5% for a 2,000 foot studio at top-quarter volume.
Retail costs $23.81 of product on the 12% of tickets that include one. Moving attach from 12% to 20% adds $14,453 a year at average volume.

How much does a Waxing the City franchise make?

The average Waxing the City unit reported $478,025 of revenue in the 2026 FDD, and the median reported $457,222. The brand’s disclosure document discloses revenue and not profit, so what an owner keeps depends on the cost structure set out below. Fees come off the top first, at about 8% of sales across royalty, brand fund and the rest of the stack. Revenue is not income. Rent, wages, cost of goods and the franchise fees all come out before an owner is paid. The figures for the highest-selling and lowest-selling businesses are below.

Sales and job value

138 studios, sorted into quartiles by what they billed.

Top quarter

$789,207

Second quarter

$537,453

Third quarter

$381,939

Bottom quarter

$204,576

2025 sales for franchised studios open the whole year, as the brand reported it, with weekly tickets and monthly customers added *Averan calculation
Group	Studios	Average revenue	Median revenue	Highest / lowest	Met or beat the average	Tickets a week	Unique customers a month
Top quarter	34	$789,207	$769,533	$1,159,131 / $614,881	14 / 41%	241	939
Second quarter	35	$537,453	$534,768	$606,128 / $459,658	16 / 46%	164	640
Third quarter	35	$381,939	$389,122	$454,787 / $285,325	19 / 54%	117	455
Bottom quarter	34	$204,576	$208,752	$276,572 / $60,168	17 / 50%	62	244
All studios	138	$478,025	$457,222	$1,159,131 / $60,168	63 / 46%	146	569

Revenue, medians, highs, lows and the met-or-beat counts are as the brand reported it.

A studio bills $70.01 a month for every unique customer it sees, at every size. That figure is the single most useful number on this page, because it converts any revenue target straight into a customer count. A studio wanting $600,000 needs 714 unique customers a month. One at $204,576 is seeing 244. The distance between the bottom quartile and the system average is 325 customers a month.

The ticket runs $48 to $84 and the median equals the average at $63. A 1.75 times range on price against a 19.3 times range on revenue. Whatever separates a $1.16 million studio from a $60,168 one, pricing is a rounding error inside it. 65 studios, 47%, beat the $63 ticket.

The top quarter's minimum is $614,881 and the second quarter's ceiling is $606,128. A gap of $8,753 between the two groups, so the top quartile is a clean group. The bottom quartile is the opposite: its ceiling of $276,572 sits below the third quarter's minimum of $285,325. Its own minimum of $60,168 is under a third of its own median. One or two very weak studios live inside that group.

Half the bottom quarter beats its own average and only 41% of the top quarter beats its own. 17 of 34 at the bottom, 14 of 34 at the top. The top quartile is dragged upward by its highest-selling members while the bottom quartile is pulled down by its lowest-selling studios. For an owner sitting mid-pack, the comparison that matters is the $457,222 system median against the $478,025 average. The average sits $20,803 above the middle studio.

Retail: 12% of tickets, $23.81 apiece.

Ticket and retail figures for all 138 studios, 2025, as the brand reported it, with per-ticket product value added *Averan calculation
Measure	Average	Median	Highest	Lowest	Met or beat the average
Ticket	$63	$63	$84	$48	65 / 47%
Retail revenue	$21,678	$24,081	$80,935	$1,369	60 / 43%
Retail attach rate	12%	n/a	n/a	n/a	60 / 43%
Product value per attached ticket *	$23.81	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

The ticket, retail revenue and attach rate rows are as the brand reported it.

Retail is 4.5% of the average studio's revenue and 5.3% of the median studio's. The median studio sells $24,081 of product against an average of $21,678. The middle of the pack beats the mean by $2,403, which puts a cluster of very weak retail studios at the bottom. The minimum is $1,369 a year, roughly $26 a week of product across a studio seeing hundreds of customers a month.

Eight points of attach rate is worth $14,453 a year. At average volume, 12% attach on 7,588 tickets is 911 product tickets. 20% is 1,518. At $23.81 apiece the difference is $14,453, more than two-thirds of the whole retail line as it stands. It arrives through a conversation at the desk.

The retail ceiling is $80,935, which is 3.7 times the average. Wider than the revenue range between quartiles. Somebody here has worked out how to sell product. The gap between them and the $1,369 minimum is the widest in percentage terms anywhere in this system.

Top performers

What separates the top Waxing the City performers

Waxing the City splits its locations into groups instead of publishing one average. The best group averaged $789,207 a year. The worst averaged $204,576. Both run the same brand, on the same agreement, paying the same fees. The middle location sold $457,222. The average was $478,025. More than half the system is below the number the brand quotes.

Decided before you open

Trade area and site.A 3.9× gap between bands is not an operating gap. Catchment, daytime population and what sits next door set the ceiling before the first customer arrives.
Capacity, fixed at build.Locations run 1,200 square feet. capacity is 138 studio floor multiplied by hours multiplied by how full they run. What you can sell is set by the build, and the build does not change after opening.
What you spend to open.Opening costs $339,945 to $646,195, a 1.9× range inside one brand. The high end usually buys more capacity, so the cheapest build is not always the cheapest route to the top band.

Live operating levers

Members, the operating driver.This model bills on members. The owner watches how many people join, how many cancel, and what a member spends beyond the plan. It is worth watching every week, because by the time it turns up in a monthly close the quarter is half gone.
The gift card book.Gift cards are sold before the service is delivered. The top performers are not selling more of them by accident, they are running a deliberate seasonal push into the holidays and out of it again. The accounting follows: a gift card is deferred revenue until it is redeemed, so cash and earned revenue arrive in different periods.
Service and retail mix.Attachment rate on retail, and the share of customers on the higher service tiers, lift what each hour earns without adding an hour or a room. It is the only lever that raises the ceiling without spending capital.
Fees, and where the minimum bites.Fees run about 8.0% of sales. A minimum sits underneath the percentage, so the low-volume location pays the higher effective rate. The brand charges the weakest locations the most. Work out the sales level where the percentage overtakes the minimum and know which side of it you are on, because the answer changes what an extra dollar of sales is worth.

Context you underwrite around

The reporting screen.138 of 167 locations are behind these figures. Locations open less than the full year, brand-owned, or not meeting the reporting criteria are excluded, as are locations under the brand’s current size standard, so the numbers describe locations that cleared that screen, not the system as a whole.
What the disclosure leaves out.Item 19 publishes no profit or cost data for franchised locations. Anything below the sales line has to come from the franchisor or from owners you call.

Top performers

How far apart the locations are

Top quarter

This filing does not split its locations into performance bands, so the gap between the highest and lowest Waxing the City location is not disclosed. What it does publish is on the Model and Finance tabs.

Fees and what it costs to open

What the fees come to, by where you sit.

Annual brand cost against quartile revenue *Averan calculation
Group	Revenue	Royalty and fund at 8%	Local advertising	Technology fee	Total	Share of revenue
Top quarter	$789,207	$63,137	$18,000	$9,588	$90,725	11.5%
Second quarter	$537,453	$42,996	$18,000	$9,588	$70,584	13.1%
All studios	$478,025	$38,242	$18,000	$9,588	$65,830	13.8%
Third quarter	$381,939	$30,555	$18,000	$9,588	$58,143	15.2%
Bottom quarter	$204,576	$16,366	$18,000	$9,588	$43,954	21.5%

Ours throughout, built from the filed rates: a 6% royalty plus a 2% marketing fund contribution, $1,500 a month of required local advertising after the grand opening period, and a $799 monthly technology fee.

$27,588 of the annual brand cost holds still whatever you bill. The $18,000 local advertising requirement and the $9,588 technology fee together are 13.5% of bottom-quarter revenue and 3.5% of top-quarter revenue. That is why the all-in rate runs from 11.5% to 21.5% on identical terms, and why volume beats margin protection here.

Wax and product purchases run $50,000 to $77,000 a year against revenue of $60,168 to $1,159,131. At bottom-quarter revenue, $50,000 of mandatory single-source supply is 24.4% of the top line. At top-quarter revenue, $77,000 is 9.8%. The franchisor is the sole source for hard wax, soft wax and strips, so this line responds to volume alone.

Building costs is the largest single cost you can size here. Base rent averaged $35.65 a square foot across the system for 2023 to 2025 with CAM at $9.67, so $45.32 all-in. A 1,200 square foot four-room studio pays $54,384 a year, 26.6% of bottom-quarter revenue. A 2,000 square foot six-room studio pays $90,640, which is 11.5% of top-quarter revenue. Square footage and volume have to move together.

The re-invention reserve is $7,200 to $12,000 a year on top. $0.50 per square foot per month, recommended as a set-aside toward the remodel required before renewal, with the franchisor holding the right to collect and hold it. Add it and the bottom quarter's all-in brand cost reaches 25.0% of revenue against 13.0% at the top.

What it costs to open a studio.

Estimated initial investment, single studio, as the brand reported it, Item 7 of the 2026 FDD
Item	Low (4 rooms, 1,200 sq ft)	High (6 rooms, 2,000 sq ft)
Initial franchise fee	$42,500	$42,500
Travel and living while training	$1,395	$2,640
Building work	$114,200	$277,720
Three months' rent and deposit	$18,200	$30,300
Construction management fees	$0	$12,500
Architect and design fees	$11,085	$21,530
Furniture, fixtures and equipment	$39,405	$59,809
Office supplies	$3,500	$4,500
Technology package and licenses	$13,084	$25,806
Interior and exterior signage	$16,500	$34,800
Initial retail inventory	$5,578	$6,108
Initial waxing supply inventory	$8,078	$8,372
Grand opening advertising	$25,000	$25,000
Insurance	$2,550	$2,850
Miscellaneous	$4,270	$7,100
Additional funds, first three months	$34,600	$84,660
Total	$339,945	$646,195

As the brand reported it.

The tenant improvement allowance is worth $42,276 to $70,460 at the system average. $35.23 a square foot on 1,200 to 2,000 feet, against a building work of $114,200 to $277,720. Franchisees in this system have landed anywhere from $0 to $100 a foot. So on a 1,600 foot studio the negotiating range between the worst and best outcome is $160,000, about half the low-end total investment.

Two rooms and 800 square feet is the difference between the two columns. $306,250 of it. Building work alone account for $163,520 of that, and the six-room build costs $36,256 a year more in rent and CAM. The revenue that has to arrive to have it is roughly 576 more tickets a year on occupancy cost alone, before the extra build is paid for.

The franchise fee has a minimum of $33,750 and a 2025 low of $27,583. List is $42,500, the published discounts reach $33,750, and the lowest fee actually collected in 2025 was $27,583, below every published tier. Area development pricing takes it to $30,000 an outlet beyond the fifth, or $22,500 for an existing franchisee who is a veteran.

The Club Orange program

The membership is 38.3% of system revenue and the whole of the quarter range.

Club Orange subscription revenue by revenue quartile, 2025, as the brand reported it, with share of revenue and the rest of the business added *Averan calculation
Group	Average Club Orange revenue	Median	Highest / lowest	Met or beat the average	Share of that group's revenue	Everything except the membership
Top quarter	$318,863	$312,601	$556,956 / $99,800	17 / 50%	40.4%	$470,344
Second quarter	$211,754	$204,645	$320,256 / $64,345	14 / 41%	39.4%	$325,699
Third quarter	$142,210	$146,512	$280,145 / $94	20 / 57%	37.2%	$239,729
Bottom quarter	$59,909	$54,728	$120,538 / $11,932	14 / 41%	29.3%	$144,667
All studios	$183,094	$172,313	$556,956 / $94	61 / 44%	38.3%	$294,931

Club Orange revenue, medians, highs, lows and counts are as the brand reported it, as is the 38.3% all-studio share.

Subscription revenue varies 5.3 times across the quartiles; everything else varies 3.3 times. $318,863 against $59,909 on the membership, $470,344 against $144,667 on the rest. So the membership is where a studio pulls ahead. A studio stuck in the bottom quartile is stuck there mainly because its subscriber base is thin.

The share climbs with every quartile: 29.3%, 37.2%, 39.4%, 40.4%. Three of the four groups sit within 3.2 points of each other and the bottom one is 7.9 points adrift. Reaching the system's 38.3% at bottom-quarter revenue means $78,353 of subscription income against the $59,909 filed, $18,444 more, on the same customer count.

The best single studio bills $556,956 of subscription alone. That is more than the top quarter's whole average and 9.3 times the bottom quarter's membership line. It also exceeds the entire revenue of every studio in the bottom half of the system.

Only 44% of studios reach the 38.3% system-wide membership share. 61 of 138. The typical studio sits below the system’s own mix, and the average is held up by a minority running a genuinely subscription-led model. That is the single clearest operating target here.

The network of locations

The network of locations. (Item 20)

Franchised studios, 2023 to 2025, as the brand reported it
Year	Start	Opened	Terminated	Non-renewals	End	Net change
2023	133	22	4	1	150	+17
2024	150	17	16	0	151	+1
2025	151	31	15	0	167	+16

As the brand reported it.

70 openings and 36 departures across three years. Roughly one studio leaves for every two that arrive. 2024 was the hard year, 17 openings against 16 terminations for a net gain of one, and 2025 recovered to 31 and 15. The system has grown 26% since the start of 2023 while turning over a quarter of itself.

Four of the 15 studios that closed had traded under twelve months, and two of those opened and closed inside 2025. Florida and Utah. A studio that reaches its first anniversary is therefore in a materially different position than one still building up. Matches an investment table carrying $34,600 to $84,660 of working capital for three months alone.

Texas holds 34 of the 167 studios, 20.4% of the system. It also carried the highest transfer activity, with eight over three years. Colorado runs nine, Illinois ten after four openings in 2025, Minnesota nine and New Jersey eight. Arizona fell from six to two after four terminations in 2024, and Michigan, Utah, Connecticut and Indiana each went to zero at some point in the period.

48 signed agreements sit unopened against 13 projected openings for 2026. Texas alone accounts for nine of the 48 and California seven, and both project zero and one opening respectively. So the pipeline is roughly 3.7 times what the franchisor expects to convert next year. The gap between signing and trading is where the working capital gets consumed.

What territory you get.

Your protected territory holds a population of up to 50,000 people. Drawn with mapping and demographic software, based on census projections for up to five years out. Described either as a map attached to your agreement or as an area around your location. It follows traffic patterns and natural boundaries. The franchisor keeps the right to grant waxing and hair removal studios under other names inside it.

Protected territories may overlap, and the grant is explicitly other than exclusive. Inside yours the franchisor will decline to approve another Waxing the City studio opening or relocating in. There are zero minimum quotas attached, the franchisor is unable to change the boundary unilaterally, and the population gets recalculated at renewal against then-current guidelines. Relocating costs $1,500 plus expenses, currently waived where you work with the franchisor's real estate team.

Questions we get asked

Questions owners ask.

What should a studio be billing?

The 138 franchised studios that traded all of 2025 averaged $478,025 with a median of $457,222, ranging from $60,168 to $1,159,131. By quartile the averages were $789,207, $537,453, $381,939 and $204,576. The top quarter starts at $614,881 and the bottom quarter tops out at $276,572. Average monthly unique customers were 569 across the system, from 74 to 1,384, and the average ticket was $63.

How much of this business is the membership?

38.3% of system revenue comes from Club Orange subscription payments, and 61 studios, 44%, reach that share. By quartile it runs 40.4%, 39.4%, 37.2% and 29.3%, on average subscription revenue of $318,863, $211,754, $142,210 and $59,909. The highest-selling single studio bills $556,956 of subscription alone. Subscription revenue varies 5.3 times across the quartiles where the rest of the business varies 3.3 times. Makes the membership base the clearest predictor of where a studio lands.

What does the brand cost each year?

A 6% royalty with a $100 weekly minimum, a 2% marketing fund contribution that may rise to 3%, $1,500 a month of required local advertising. A $799 monthly technology fee rising 10% a year compounded. Together that is 11.5% of revenue at top-quarter volume and 21.5% at bottom-quarter volume, because $27,588 of it holds still. Wax and product purchases add $50,000 to $77,000 a year from the franchisor as sole source. A $0.50 per square foot monthly re-invention reserve is recommended toward the remodel required at renewal.

What does it cost to open?

$339,945 for a four-room 1,200 square foot studio and $646,195 for a six-room 2,000 square foot studio. That includes a $42,500 franchise fee and $25,000 of required grand opening and build-up-up spend. Building work are the swing line at $114,200 to $277,720. A tenant improvement allowance that has averaged $35.23 a square foot in this system and ranged from $0 to $100. Cash to run the business day to day for the first three months is carried at $34,600 to $84,660.

Who does bookkeeping for a Waxing the City franchise?

Lead the monthly pack with unique customers: revenue divides into them at $70.01 apiece system-wide, so a revenue target converts straight into a customer count. Then Club Orange as a percentage of revenue against the 38.3% system figure, tracked as active subscribers, new sign-ups and cancellations. Then retail attach rate against 12%, where each point is worth about $1,807 a year at average volume. Two mechanics need watching in the close: sales for royalty purposes counts gift cards and membership packages at the time of sale and keeps chargebacks in. Puts the royalty base ahead of recognized revenue. And the technology fee compounds at 10% a year, so the budgeted figure moves annually. Averan provides bookkeeping, controller, and fractional CFO support for franchise owners and has Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors on the team.

What this filing does not disclose

No profit figure. The filing reports sales and not earnings, so what an owner keeps is not disclosed.
No cost lines. Wages, rent and cost of goods are not broken out, so margin cannot be rebuilt from the document.

Questions worth putting to Waxing the City

The filing answers what it answers. These are the gaps an owner or a buyer should close directly.

What do locations at the median spend on wages and rent as a share of sales? The filing reports sales only.
What separates the highest-selling locations from the lowest: trade area, years open, size, or the owner?
How long does a new location take to reach the average you publish, and what does the build-up look like month by month?
At what level of sales do the minimum charges stop applying and the percentage take over?
How many Waxing the City locations closed, were sold, or changed hands last year, and why?

Part of our Health & Wellness Franchise Finance guide and the Beauty & Personal Care Franchise Finance guide · Āveran Franchise Resource Center

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Where these figures come from.

Every figure here comes from Waxing the City Franchisor LLC's 31 March 2026 FDD, covering the 2025 calendar year. The document is unaudited by us. The figures are based on data franchisees report to the franchisor. We are unaffiliated with the brand. The figures describe past performance at other studios. Calculations of our own are labeled where they appear. The brand’s disclosure document discloses revenue. Membership revenue. Customers. Ticket and retail figures and discloses zero cost or profit data. This page is an educational summary. Legal or tax advice. WAXING THE CITY® is a registered trademark of its owner. How Averan reads a Franchise Disclosure Document.

Where this sits

the franchise library, all 243 brands · how franchise unit economics work · running the books across several locations · what Averan does for franchise owners

The same business, other brands

Waxing the City reads against the rest of the beauty & personal care group: Amazing Lash Studio · Blo Blow Dry Bar · Drybar · European Wax Center · Hammer & Nails · The Lash Lounge. The beauty & personal care guide compares all of them on the same figures.

Questions owners ask next

The figures above raise these, and each one is answered on its own page.

Money arrives before the service does. How should that be booked?Deferred revenue, and why the bank balance and the profit line disagree.
At what level of sales does a minimum fee stop costing me more than the percentage?How royalty, ad fund and minimums actually work on a monthly statement.
How much cash do I fund before a new location covers its own costs?A 13-week forecast for the months before break-even.
How much of Item 19 can I rely on?What a financial performance representation does and does not tell you.
What should I be looking at every week?The handful of numbers that move before the P&L does.

Where to next

Compare brands, every brand in the library on one screen
Item 19, how to read Item 19 of an FDD
What Items 5 and 6 must disclose
Checking the franchisor’s own finances
Fractional CFO, for the forecast behind a second location and the cash plan that carries it
Bookkeeping for franchise owners, what this looks like when someone else keeps the books
Health & Wellness Franchise Finance, the category guide this breakdown sits in
Bookkeeping, monthly close built around the way your brand reports
Controller, when the numbers need someone reading them as well as recording them

Scott Engler

Founder & Principal, Averan Advisors

Averan provides bookkeeping, controller, and fractional CFO support for franchise owners and has Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors on the team. More about the team →

If you want this done for you

What happens next

Everything above came out of a filing. Doing it on your own numbers means the books have to produce the same lines: sales, wages, occupancy, fees and what is left, by location, every month. That is the work.

The call, twenty minutesYou describe the business and where the numbers are letting you down. We tell you honestly whether we can help, and what we would start with. No pitch deck.
We look at the fileYou give us read access to the books as they are. We come back with what is wrong, what it will take to fix, and whether the answer is bookkeeping, controller work, or something else.
A written scope and a priceWhat we do each month, what you get, the date it lands, and the fee. Agreed before anything starts, and it does not move without you agreeing it.
Transition, then the first closeAccess, systems, and the opening balances. The first close lands on the date in the scope, and every one after it does too.

Start with the call →How an engagement runs

Averan is not a CPA firm and does not file taxes. Your CPA keeps that, and we keep the books they file from.