7-Eleven vs Circle K franchise: 7,274 US franchised stores vs about 650, a rent-inclusive gross profit split vs a 3.5% royalty. Which model fits which buyer.
Quick answer Choose 7-Eleven if you want an operating store and no real estate. Item 20 of its 2026 FDD shows 7,274 US franchised stores at the end of 2025 against roughly 650 for Circle K, and 7-Eleven supplies the land, building and equipment. Choose Circle K if you already control a site and want the equity, because its 3.5% royalty leaves outperformance with you while 7-Eleven takes 58 to 59 cents of every marginal gross-profit dollar. That split is only that large because it is also your rent.
If your goal is to actually franchise a convenience store in 2026, 7-Eleven is the realistic answer and Circle K mostly isn’t. Item 20 of 7-Eleven’s 2026 FDD, parsed in VetMyFranchise’s database of 2,000+ FDDs, reports 7,274 US franchised stores at the end of 2025, another 151 franchise agreements signed and waiting on a store, and 223 outlets transferred to new owners during the year. Circle K runs roughly 650 US franchised stores and its program is built mainly around converting independents.
Availability decides who has a choice at all. For the buyers who do, the decision runs on one difference, and it is not price.
7-Eleven obtains the land, the building and the equipment and leases all three to you. Circle K does not. That single structural fact sets the fee schedule, the entry cost, the exit mechanics and the termination column at both brands, and every surface-level comparison of these two goes wrong by ignoring it.
So the question is not which one is cheaper. It is whether you want to own the property or rent it as a percentage of gross profit, forever. Cost detail for each side lives on its own page: the 7-Eleven franchise cost breakdown and the Circle K franchise cost breakdown. This page answers which one to buy.
| Item | 7-Eleven (2026 FDD) | Circle K |
|---|---|---|
| Total initial investment | $162,900 to $1,656,800 | $268,500 to $4,846,500 |
| Initial franchise fee | $0 to $1,100,000 (Item 7); $0 to $800,000 actually charged in 2025 (Item 5) | $25,000 (25% conversion discount) |
| Ongoing fee structure | 11-band formula on gross profit, 45% to 56% effective, 59% peak marginal | 3.5% + $0.0075/gal fuel + ~1% marketing |
| Advertising fee | 1% of gross profit | included above |
| Item 19 disclosure | Gross sales, gross profit, GP%, gas commissions, split into thirds by state | Gross sales + merchandise margin |
| Real estate model | Franchisor obtains land, building and equipment; franchisee leases them through the 7-Eleven Charge | Franchisee typically owns/leases |
| Territory | No minimum territory, no exclusive territory (Item 12) | Varies by agreement |
| U.S. franchised store count | 7,274 at 12/31/2025 (Item 20) | 650+ (mostly conversions) |
| Term | 15 years, $50,000 renewal fee | 10-15 years |
| Net worth requirement | $10,000 Minimum Net Worth, maintained monthly (Item 5) | $1,000,000 including $100,000 liquid, single-store agreement |
7-Eleven figures come from the 2026 FDD in VetMyFranchise’s database; its Item 20 tables run through December 31, 2025 and its Item 5 fee range is the calendar-2025 actual. Circle K figures come from its franchise disclosures, summarized in the Circle K Franchise Cost breakdown. Circle K is not in VetMyFranchise’s parsed FDD set, so treat its column as directional and pull the document yourself.
One row in that table does more work than the rest. 7-Eleven’s Item 7 carries no land, building or construction line at all, and Circle K’s carries the site as the largest number in the range. Everything below follows from that. The line-by-line Item 7 stack sits on the cost page; what belongs here is what the difference does to a buyer.
Item 6 sets the 7-Eleven Charge with an eleven-band formula keyed to the store’s gross profit over the 12 months before the current month, not with the flat “45 to 56%” that brand summaries quote. The full band schedule and effective-rate curve sit on the cost page. Three features of that schedule change the Circle K comparison.
The marginal rate peaks in the middle rather than at the top. The most expensive gross-profit dollars an operator will ever earn are the ones between $650,000 and $900,000 of trailing gross profit, taxed at 59 cents. Above $900,000 the marginal rate falls back to 58%, then 57%, then 56%. A franchisor that wanted to punish scale would do the opposite; this schedule is built to compress the middle, which is where almost every disclosed store sits.
The 56% ceiling is asymptotic. A store at $2,000,000 of trailing gross profit pays an effective 55.85%, and at $2,500,000 it pays 55.88%. “Up to 56%” describes a limit no operator actually reaches.
New stores start at the floor. Item 6 deems trailing gross profit to be $200,000 for the first two full months, then twelve times the average of all full months until month thirteen, so the opening months are priced at 45% regardless of volume.
Circle K has no analogue to any of it. Its 3.5% of gross sales applies identically to the first dollar and the ten-millionth. The two structures are not on the same axis, which is why what follows matters more than either fee schedule.
Now put the formula against actual performance. Every input below is disclosed. The Item 19 gross profit figures come from Exhibit H of the 2026 FDD, the charge comes from the Item 6 band formula, and the 1% Advertising Fee comes from the Item 6 fee table. Nothing here is assumed or estimated. What the arithmetic produces is not a disclosed figure and 7-Eleven does not publish it, but every number feeding it is in the document.
Virginia is the largest state in this FDD’s Exhibit H, with 497 reporting stores in FY2025.
| Virginia cohort, FY2025 | Stores | Avg gross sales | Avg gross profit | GP % of sales | Effective charge | 7-Eleven takes | Operator keeps, after 1% ad fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom third | 166 | $1,784,119 | $610,755 | 34.23% | 52.19% | $318,738 | $285,910 |
| Middle third | 166 | $2,406,843 | $833,840 | 34.64% | 53.96% | $449,966 | $375,536 |
| Top third | 165 | $3,226,030 | $1,110,959 | 34.44% | 55.03% | $611,356 | $488,493 |
That last column is not net income. It is what remains before labor, utilities, shrink, card fees, insurance, maintenance and debt service, none of which the FDD discloses at store level. Anyone quoting you a 7-Eleven “net” figure is guessing at the biggest line in the P&L.
The column that matters for a buying decision is the one nobody publishes: what happens to the next dollar.
Moving from the Virginia bottom third to the middle third adds $223,085 of gross profit and $91,857 to the operator. That is 41.2 cents on the dollar. Moving from the middle third to the top third adds $277,119 of gross profit and $115,728 to the operator: 41.8 cents.
Run the same arithmetic in the other large states in this FDD and the number barely moves.
| Cohort step, FY2025 | Added gross profit | Added to operator | Operator’s keep rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia bottom → middle | $223,085 | $91,857 | 41.2¢ |
| Virginia middle → top | $277,119 | $115,728 | 41.8¢ |
| Pennsylvania bottom → middle | $167,775 | $70,363 | 41.9¢ |
| Pennsylvania middle → top | $310,522 | $128,021 | 41.2¢ |
| New Jersey bottom → middle | $148,277 | $61,755 | 41.6¢ |
| New Jersey middle → top | $272,513 | $112,477 | 41.3¢ |
Six independent cohort steps across three states, all landing between 41.2 and 41.9 cents. That consistency is not an accident. It is the 58-59% marginal band doing its work, and almost every disclosed cohort sits inside it. Exhibit H reports 27 state cohort averages for FY2025 across the nine states this FDD covers. Twenty-six of them are at or above the $450,000 line where the marginal rate hits 58%. The single exception, Ohio’s bottom third at $438,405, still pays 57% at the margin. The lowest cohort in the entire exhibit is more than double the $200,000 threshold where the 45% floor applies, which means essentially no reporting store is buying the headline number.
So the honest way to state 7-Eleven’s economics is not “45 to 56 percent.” It is: you build the store’s volume, and you keep roughly 41 cents of what that growth produces at the gross-profit line, before you have paid a single employee.
Compare that to a conventional royalty. At Circle K’s disclosed 3.5% of gross sales, the operator keeps roughly 96.5 cents of each incremental sales dollar at the royalty line, then pays every operating cost out of it, including occupancy. The two structures are not on the same axis, which is why the next section matters more than either fee schedule.
This is the part surface comparisons never reach, and it is stated flatly in the document.
Item 7, Note 7 of the 2026 FDD: “You do not buy the land, building or equipment where the store is located. We obtain the land, building, equipment, leasehold improvements, fixtures, furnishings and cover the decorating costs, and you must lease it from us under the franchise agreement. Part of the 7-Eleven Charge you pay covers your required lease of the land, building and equipment.”
The same language shows up in Item 8 for equipment: “We are the only approved supplier of the Store’s 7-Eleven Equipment and certain fixtures and other improvements. You will lease such items from us through your payment of the 7-Eleven Charge.”
Item 6, Note 1 spells out everything the charge buys: “The 7-Eleven Charge is the continuing royalty payment you must pay us for your license to use the 7-Eleven service mark, the 7-Eleven System and trade secrets, your lease of the store and 7-Eleven Equipment from us or an affiliate and the continuing services we provide.”
So the 45-56% is not a royalty. It is a royalty, plus rent, plus an equipment lease, plus bookkeeping, bundled into one variable line. Which means every comparison that sets 7-Eleven’s 45-56% next to Circle K’s 3.5% is comparing a fully-loaded occupancy-inclusive number to a bare trademark royalty. The correct comparison adds a real market rent and equipment cost to the Circle K side first.
It also explains why 7-Eleven’s initial investment starts at $162,900 while Circle K’s starts at $268,500. You are not buying less. You are renting the expensive part, forever, as a percentage.
The trade-off is equity. The Circle K operator who owns or mortgages the site holds an appreciating asset on a personal balance sheet. The 7-Eleven operator’s only transferable value is store-level cash flow, and the transfer requires franchisor approval. Whether the equity is worth the operating burden of developing and holding real estate is the actual decision. The Item 7 estimated initial investment breakdown is the right framework for running it with your own numbers, and building a pro forma from Item 19 is how you turn the cohort table above into a store-specific model.
Compare these FDDs side-by-side before you decide. Get a $99 AI-powered 3-pack of FDD analyses for 7-Eleven, Circle K, and a third c-store of your choice: the fastest way to see whether profit-split or traditional-royalty fits your buyer profile.
Not every dollar the store generates runs through the formula, and the exclusions are worth underwriting separately.
Consigned gasoline commissions are excluded. Item 6 defines Net Sales to include commissions and fees generally, but explicitly carves out “the value of commissions that you receive for the sale of gasoline.” Those dollars never enter Gross Profit, so 7-Eleven never splits them. Exhibit H reports them separately for fuel stores only. In Virginia FY2025 the average was $13,433 across 85 bottom-third fuel stores, $15,312 across 79 middle-third stores and $21,392 across 92 top-third stores.
That sounds like free money until you read Item 8. You do not buy the gasoline, you sell it on consignment at retail prices 7-Eleven designates, the gasoline facility is excluded from your lease, 7-Eleven expects to make a profit on the fuel it supplies you, and it can remove all consigned gasoline equipment from your store at its sole discretion without compensating you. Electric vehicle charging stations are treated the same way, except worse: excluded from the lease, and you receive no revenue from them at all.
Financing runs on a separate meter. 7-Eleven advances your inventory and approved operating expenses through an Open Account. Item 7, Note 4 sets the interest rate at Bank of America’s prime rate as of January 1 of each year plus 2%, and Item 6 lists the current APR as 8.75%. That is a real recurring cost a Circle K operator buying inventory on vendor terms does not carry, and it does not appear anywhere in the 45-56% band.
Item 6 gives 7-Eleven three unilateral escalators. None of them is priced into the band schedule.
The vendor requirement. Item 8 requires at least 85% of your total inventory purchases and, separately, 85% of your cigarette purchases, both computed monthly at cost, from Recommended Vendors. Miss that for three consecutive full calendar months and 7-Eleven may unilaterally amend your franchise agreement to increase the 7-Eleven Charge by two percentage points. The increase can be reinstated every time you miss again.
The hours requirement. You must operate 24 hours. Operate short with permission and the charge rises by 0.1% of gross profit for each hour per week the store is closed. Operate short without permission and it rises by 4% of gross profit if you run at least 136 hours a week, or 6% if you run less, on top of 7-Eleven’s right to terminate.
Possession. If you die, become incapacitated, or if in 7-Eleven’s opinion a divorce, dissolution, criminal proceeding or other incident jeopardizes the store’s operation, 7-Eleven can take possession and charge a management fee of up to 5% of gross profit plus out-of-pocket costs while it runs the store for your account.
There is support running the other way, and it is worth knowing about. The Gross Income Support policy may credit you the difference if your store’s prior-year Gross Income (gross profit less the 7-Eleven Charge) came in under $280,000, capped at $100,000 per period. The FDD’s own example: a store with $250,000 of Gross Income may receive a $30,000 credit, paid as $2,500 per accounting period. Additional Gross Income Support of up to $70,000 annually may apply to designated corporate stores being franchised out. Both are policies 7-Eleven states it may discontinue or modify at any time, not contractual rights, so do not underwrite on them.
The full fee stack sits in Item 6 other fees and the supply-chain obligations in Item 8 supply chain and vendor requirements. Read both before you model anything.
Item 20 Table 1 of the 2026 FDD:
| Outlet type | Start 2023 | End 2023 | End 2024 | End 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franchised | 7,218 | 7,245 | 7,229 | 7,274 |
| Company-owned | 1,587 | 1,604 | 1,025 | 1,029 |
| Total | 8,805 | 8,849 | 8,254 | 8,303 |
Two things there. The franchised base is essentially flat, adding 56 net stores over three years. And the company-owned base fell by 579 units in 2024, driven by 737 corporate closures in that single year per Table 4. Corporate stabilized in 2025 at 1,029.
Now the number that gets misread. Item 20 Table 3 shows this for franchised outlets:
| Year | Opened | Terminations | Non-renewals | Reacquired by franchisor | Ceased, other | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 277 | 0 | 0 | 167 | 83 | 7,245 |
| 2024 | 300 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 76 | 7,229 |
| 2025 | 283 | 0 | 0 | 160 | 78 | 7,274 |
Zero terminations and zero non-renewals across three years looks like an extraordinary franchisee-relations record. It isn’t one. 7-Eleven footnotes the table itself: because it owns or leases the land, building and equipment at its traditional franchise sites and leases the site to franchisees, it “may reacquire more sites than other franchisors and list such sites as reacquired rather than terminated.” The exit channel is column 7, not column 5. Across 2023 to 2025 that channel moved 567 stores, plus 237 more that ceased operations for other reasons.
This is a direct consequence of the same real estate structure that produces the 45-56% charge. When the franchisor holds the lease, ending the relationship is a property action, not a contract termination. If you compare 7-Eleven’s termination column against a conventional franchisor’s, you are comparing two different things and you will reach the wrong conclusion about franchisee churn. The Item 3 litigation research framework is the better place to look for relationship strain in this system.
Table 5 gives the forward picture as of December 31, 2025: 151 franchise agreements signed but not yet opened, 104 projected new franchised outlets in the next fiscal year, and 78 projected new company-owned.
Item 20 Table 2 records transfers of outlets from franchisees to new owners: 219 in 2023, 190 in 2024, and 223 in 2025. Against 283 outlets opened as franchised in 2025, resales are a large share of how operators actually enter this system, and the FDD is the only place that number is disclosed.
Item 5 explains the mechanic. When you buy a current franchisee’s interest in a “goodwill store,” you may owe goodwill to the seller on top of the Franchise Fee. You negotiate that payment directly with the seller without 7-Eleven’s involvement, but 7-Eleven collects it. The exception matters: if 7-Eleven has settled with a franchisee who assigned it the goodwill rights, or exercised a right of first refusal and already paid the outgoing franchisee, you negotiate with 7-Eleven and it keeps the money.
There is a discount channel worth knowing about too. Item 5 discloses a Store Manager Franchise Assistance program under which a qualified individual who managed a corporate 7-Eleven store for at least one calendar year immediately before signing may receive a reduced Franchise Fee, a waived Down Payment, or a credit to their Open Account, repayable if they do not stay at the store two years.
Circle K resales exist but are rare because the franchise base is small. The more common Circle K play is buying an independent c-store and converting it under the conversion program.
If you are looking at a 7-Eleven resale, the buying a resale franchise due diligence guide and the franchise resale valuation guide both apply, with one 7-Eleven-specific addition: ask for the “Here Are The Facts” supplemental disclosure. Item 19 states that if the store has operated at least 12 months, 7-Eleven will provide that store’s actual last-12-months results plus additional expense information. That single document is worth more than every average in Exhibit H.
Item 5 requires you to maintain a Minimum Net Worth of at least $10,000 in the inventory and other items 7-Eleven finances. Second and subsequent stores carry a $5,000 requirement.
Then it discloses how that works out in practice. In 2024, 818 franchised stores, approximately 11% of the system, failed the requirement and received a breach notice. In 2025, 833 stores, again approximately 11%, did the same.
A $10,000 floor that roughly one in nine stores trips every year is telling you something about how thin the working-capital position gets under this model. And it is not cosmetic. Item 17 lists maintaining the Minimum Net Worth for the year immediately preceding expiration as a precondition of renewal, alongside not having received four or more default notices in the prior two years, completing an operations review to 7-Eleven’s satisfaction, meeting then-current financial qualifications, paying a $50,000 renewal fee, and 7-Eleven deciding to keep the store open as a 7-Eleven at all.
Add Item 12 on top: no minimum territory, no exclusive territory, and an explicit reservation of the right to open corporate or franchised stores next to or near your location, plus 7NOW delivery and other channels, without compensation to you.
7-Eleven fits a buyer who wants a turnkey store and has no interest in developing or holding real estate. It rewards a hands-on owner-operator, ideally one with multi-member family labor available for 24-hour coverage, whose store’s gross profit is likely to sit near or below the $650,000 band where the marginal take is lowest. You are optimizing for current cash flow rather than balance-sheet equity, and you can carry a working-capital position that clears the $10,000 Minimum Net Worth floor every month for fifteen years.
Circle K, or an independent you could convert under its program, fits the opposite profile: an experienced c-store, gas station or retail operator who can secure or already owns real estate at a viable site. Circle K discloses a $1,000,000 net worth requirement including $100,000 liquid for a single-store agreement, so the capital test is steeper than the fee suggests. You are building wealth through property equity rather than operating income, you are comfortable with zoning, fuel canopy and environmental diligence, and you want the operating leverage of a fixed royalty where outperformance stays with you instead of being split.
There is a third bucket worth naming. Buyers who run this math and conclude that neither structure fits are usually right. C-stores are 24/7 operations with payroll churn, shrink exposure and tight margins, and both models assume you enjoy the retail floor. If that is not you, look at home-based franchises or low-cost franchises under $100K before locking in.
7-Eleven is a franchise. Circle K is a corporate retailer running a small franchise program on the side. If you want meaningful selection in a c-store franchise in 2026, 7-Eleven is where the doors are open, and the 2026 FDD shows 151 signed agreements waiting on stores plus 223 resales in the last year.
But go in with the correct picture of what you are signing. The franchise fee is a per-store price that ran to $800,000 last year, not zero. The split is a formula that takes 58 to 59 cents of the marginal gross-profit dollar at the volumes almost every reporting store actually operates at. That charge is your rent and your equipment lease as well as your royalty, which is the only reason it can be that large. The termination column reads zero because exits are booked as reacquisitions. And roughly 11% of the system trips a $10,000 net worth floor every year that also gates renewal.
None of that makes it a bad deal. For an operator who wants a stocked, staffed, financed store without touching real estate, it is a rational trade, and the 45% floor plus the Gross Income Support policy do provide a genuine cushion on weak stores. It makes it a specific deal, one that rewards a specific operator and punishes anyone who signed expecting a 6% royalty business.
This page answers which brand to buy. It does not price either one. For 7-Eleven’s line-by-line Item 7 stack, the per-store franchise fee mechanics and the full Item 6 band schedule, see the 7-Eleven franchise cost breakdown. For Circle K’s fee schedule, net worth test and a worked owner-earnings model, see Circle K franchise cost.
Either way, do not sign anything until you have read both Item 5s, Item 6s, Item 7s, Item 19s and Item 20s, and until you have the store-specific “Here Are The Facts” disclosure in hand. The FTC’s consumer guide to buying a franchise and the FTC Franchise Rule walk through the same items in plain English. Surface comparisons of these two brands lie by omission. Only the FDDs tell the truth, and only the formulas inside them tell it precisely.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
No. Item 7 of the 2026 FDD lists the Franchise Fee line at $0 to $1,100,000 and Item 5 discloses that fees actually charged in 2025 ran $0 to $800,000, priced per store. The full per-store pricing mechanics, the veteran discount and the financing terms are in the 7-Eleven franchise cost breakdown. For this comparison the point is narrower: 7-Eleven's fee is a variable per-store price while Circle K's is a fixed $25,000, so the two cannot be lined up as a single number.
Item 6 of the 2026 FDD sets the 7-Eleven Charge with an eleven-band formula keyed to trailing 12-month gross profit, with a marginal rate that peaks at 59% between $650,000 and $900,000. The full band schedule and the effective-rate curve are published in the 7-Eleven franchise cost breakdown. What matters for the Circle K comparison is where the disclosed stores actually sit: 26 of the 27 state cohorts in Exhibit H are above the $450,000 line where the marginal rate reaches 58%, so the operative rate is 58 to 59 cents on the marginal dollar, not the 45% floor.
Take Virginia, the largest state in the 2026 FDD's Exhibit H with 497 reporting stores. The middle-third store averaged $2,406,843 in gross sales and $833,840 in gross profit in FY2025. Run that through the Item 6 formula and the effective 7-Eleven Charge is 53.96%, or $449,966. The operator's Gross Income is $383,874, and the 1% Advertising Fee (also assessed on gross profit, not sales) takes another $8,338. That leaves $375,536 before any labor, utilities, shrink, card fees or debt service. The FDD does not disclose those store-level operating expenses, so nobody can hand you a net income figure. That is exactly why you ask for the store-specific 'Here Are The Facts' disclosure described in Item 19.
Yes, but the pipeline is narrow. Circle K is owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard and is overwhelmingly company-operated in North America. The U.S. franchise program exists primarily for conversions of independent c-stores and select new builds. Against 7-Eleven's 7,274 franchised U.S. stores at the end of 2025 per Item 20 of the 2026 FDD, Circle K has just over 650 as of 2026. If your goal is to buy any c-store franchise this year, 7-Eleven is the realistic answer, unless you already control a site, in which case the four smaller c-store systems with current FDDs are worth a look.
Circle K on paper, but the comparison is structurally invalid until you fix the rent line. A traditional royalty of 3.5% of gross sales plus $0.0075 per fuel gallon and a small marketing contribution is far lower than 7-Eleven's 45-56% of gross profit. But Item 7 Note 7 of 7-Eleven's 2026 FDD states plainly that the franchisor obtains the land, building, equipment, leasehold improvements, fixtures and furnishings, and that part of the 7-Eleven Charge covers your required lease of them. Item 8 says the same thing about 7-Eleven Equipment: you lease it through your payment of the 7-Eleven Charge. So 7-Eleven's number is royalty plus rent plus equipment lease plus bookkeeping, and Circle K's is royalty only. Add a real occupancy cost to the Circle K P&L before you compare.
Because of the same real estate structure. Item 20 Table 3 of the 2026 FDD shows zero terminations and zero non-renewals in 2023, 2024 and 2025. It also shows 167, 240 and 160 outlets reacquired by the franchisor in those years, 567 in total. The FDD footnotes the reason directly: 7-Eleven owns or leases the land, building and equipment at its traditional franchise sites and leases the site to franchisees, so it may reacquire more sites than other franchisors and lists them as reacquired rather than terminated. A zero in the termination column is a bookkeeping consequence of who holds the lease, not evidence that nobody exits.
Consigned gasoline commissions. The Item 6 definition of Net Sales explicitly excludes the value of commissions you receive for the sale of gasoline, so those dollars never enter Gross Profit and never get split. Exhibit H reports them separately: among Virginia fuel stores in FY2025, the average commission was $13,433 in the bottom third, $15,312 in the middle third and $21,392 in the top third. The offset is that Item 8 puts the gasoline facility outside your lease, sets the retail price at 7-Eleven's discretion, and states that 7-Eleven expects to profit on the fuel it supplies. Electric vehicle charging stations are also excluded from the lease and you receive no revenue from them at all.
Three triggers in Item 6. Miss the Recommended Vendor Purchase Requirement (Item 8 sets it at 85% of total inventory purchases and, separately, 85% of cigarette purchases, both computed monthly at cost) for three consecutive months and 7-Eleven may unilaterally amend the agreement to add two percentage points to your charge. Operate fewer than 24 hours without permission and the charge goes up 4% of gross profit if you run at least 136 hours a week, or 6% if you run less. Operate short hours with permission and it goes up 0.1% per hour closed per week. Separately, if 7-Eleven takes possession of the store (death, incapacity, or a divorce or criminal proceeding it judges to jeopardize operations) it can charge a management fee of up to 5% of gross profit on top of everything else.
7-Eleven's, by a wide margin, and not for the reason most comparisons give. Its Exhibit H breaks each covered state into bottom, middle and top thirds and reports average and median gross sales, average and median gross profit, gross profit as a percent of sales, and consigned gasoline commissions, with high and low values for each. That is cohort data, so you can see the spread rather than one system-wide average. It also discloses that if the store you want has operated at least 12 months, 7-Eleven will give you a supplemental 'Here Are The Facts' statement with that specific store's last 12 months of actual results plus additional expense information. Ask for it. Circle K discloses gross sales and merchandise margin in its franchise FDD, which is thinner and not cohort-split.
$162,900 to $1,656,800 per Item 7 of the 2026 FDD, with no land or building line because 7-Eleven supplies both. The line-by-line stack behind that range is in the 7-Eleven franchise cost breakdown.
$268,500 to $3,029,500 to convert an existing convenience store and $1,383,500 to $4,846,500 to build new, on a $25,000 franchise fee, per Circle K's published franchise disclosures. The fee schedule, the $1,000,000 net worth test and the owner-earnings model are in the Circle K franchise cost breakdown. Circle K is not among the 2,000+ FDDs parsed in VetMyFranchise's database, so pull the document before relying on any of it.
The FDD does not say, and any figure that claims to is a guess. Exhibit H of the 2026 FDD discloses gross sales and gross profit by state cohort but no store-level operating expenses, so there is no disclosed net income anywhere in the document. What the arithmetic does support: a Virginia middle-third store in FY2025 averaged $833,840 of gross profit, paid an effective 53.96% charge plus a 1% advertising fee, and had $375,536 left before labor, utilities, shrink, card fees and debt service. The store-specific 'Here Are The Facts' disclosure gets you closer than any average will.
Neither FDD discloses profit, so the honest answer is structural rather than numeric. 7-Eleven takes 58 to 59 cents of the marginal gross-profit dollar at the volumes almost every reporting store actually operates at, but that charge covers rent and the equipment lease. Circle K takes 3.5% of gross sales plus $0.0075 per fuel gallon and leaves you to carry occupancy separately. A Circle K operator who owns the site keeps more operating income and builds equity; a 7-Eleven operator keeps less and has no property to finance. Model both with a real market rent on the Circle K side before you compare them.
Neither, honestly. C-store franchises are 24/7 operations with thin margins, payroll churn and theft exposure, and 7-Eleven contractually requires 24-hour operation. Two disclosures should give a first-timer pause. Item 12 states you receive no minimum territory and no exclusive territory, and that 7-Eleven can open corporate or franchised stores next to or near yours without compensating you. Item 5 discloses that 833 franchised stores, about 11% of the system, received a breach notice in 2025 for failing to maintain a $10,000 Minimum Net Worth, and Item 17 makes maintaining that requirement for the year before expiration a precondition of renewal. If you are new to operating, look at simpler service franchises first.
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