Yes. Shell subsidiary Jiffy Lube International franchises 1,765 of 2,083 US centers. The 2026 FDD: $35,000 fee, 4% royalty, $211K to $510K to open.
Quick answer Yes. Jiffy Lube International, a Shell USA subsidiary, franchises the brand, and 1,765 of the 2,083 US service centers were franchised on December 31, 2025. The 2026 FDD sets a $35,000 initial franchise fee, a 4% royalty, and a $211,000 to $510,000 initial investment that excludes land and building costs.
Franchisees operated 1,765 Jiffy Lube service centers in the United States on December 31, 2025, against 318 company-owned ones. Item 20 of the 2026 FDD puts the whole system at 2,083 outlets, so roughly 85% of it belongs to independent operators. The corporate share is shrinking deliberately: company-owned units went from 354 to 318 during 2025, with 34 recorded as closed and 4 sold to franchisees.
Jiffy Lube International, Inc. is a Delaware corporation that has offered franchises since 1979. The ownership chain above it deserves a slow read.
Item 1 lays out the stack. Jiffy Lube International is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pennzoil-Quaker State Company, doing business as SOPUS Products. SOPUS Products is a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell USA, Inc., which sits beneath Shell Petroleum, Inc., then Shell Petroleum N.V., then Shell plc. The FDD calls the group the Shell Group.
That structure has a commercial edge to it. SOPUS Products is both the franchisor’s parent and the franchisee’s supplier. Under the Pacesetter Franchise Agreement it supplies the motor oils, transmission fluids and greases, and Item 5 estimates you will buy $20,000 to $30,000 of those products before you open. The royalty is wired to the same relationship: Item 6 sets it at 4% of gross sales, rising to 5% if the Pacesetter or Fast Lubes Supply Agreement is terminated.
Item 1 also discloses that SOPUS lets some of its lubricants customers run independent fast lube centers under the Shell Rapid Lube mark, paying no franchise fee and no royalty, and it says outright that some of those centers may compete with Jiffy Lube centers. Your franchisor’s parent licenses a competing format for free, and it tells you so in the document you are being asked to sign against.
| Item 7 line | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $0 | $35,000 |
| First month’s rent and security deposit | $16,000 | $40,000 |
| Equipment, signs and fixtures | $125,000 | $325,000 |
| Initial inventory | $20,000 | $30,000 |
| Opening marketing expense | $15,000 | $20,000 |
| Insurance, annual premium | $10,000 | $20,000 |
| Training expenses | $1,000 | $5,000 |
| Additional funds, 6 months | $45,000 | $45,000 |
| Item 7 total as printed | $211,000 | $510,000 |
Two things about that total. Add the lines yourself and you get $232,000 to $520,000, which is the exact figure printed on the FDD’s own cover page. The Item 7 total row runs about $21,000 light at the bottom and $10,000 light at the top. Both numbers are in the same 2026 document, and only the cover page reconciles with the table sitting under it.
The bigger gap is real estate. Footnote 2 says the rent line assumes a Build to Suit arrangement in which the landlord pays for the land, the building and the up-front site work. Buy instead of lease and the same footnote estimates $300,000 to over $800,000 to acquire a suitable site, plus $700,000 to $1,200,000 to build a four-bay center, and it adds that some franchisees have spent more than $1 million on a site they believed was good. The Item 7 range is the tenant number. The owner number is several times larger.
Item 5 fills in the fee. A new center pays $35,000, split $10,000 at signing and $25,000 on the 15th of the month after the center opens. A Converted Center, meaning a shop that traded under another automotive mark for at least 12 months, pays $17,500. Honorably discharged US military veterans may have the fee waived on a first agreement, and operators signing a second through fifth agreement under the Significant Growth Funding or Build to Suit programs may qualify for a waiver as well. Item 5 gives the real spread: during fiscal 2025, franchisees paid between $0 and $35,000.
Royalty is 4% of gross sales, discounted to 3% if you stay current on every obligation and pay on time. New-to-system locations run at 0% royalty for their first six months. Advertising is where the arithmetic tightens: 1.5% to the national ad fund, 2.5% to local or cooperative advertising, and a minimum annual advertising requirement of 4% of gross sales that those two contributions count toward. Call the recurring load 7% to 8% of sales before rent and payroll.
Then there are the technology lines, which are easy to skim past and never stop: up to $192 per month per POS system, $73 per month for hardware support, $18 per store for the Cisco Meraki license, and a three-year POS equipment lease at $312 to $800 per month. Transfers cost $3,500 plus expenses, renewal costs $10,000, and relocating or replacing a center costs $7,500 or $12,500.
See the full Jiffy Lube data sheet. We pull the figures from Items 5, 7 and 19 of the filed FDD rather than from a franchise development page.
| Quartile, 2025 franchised centers | Centers | Average net adjusted sales |
|---|---|---|
| First | 513 | $539,408 |
| Second | 512 | $836,477 |
| Third | 512 | $1,129,889 |
| Fourth | 512 | $1,831,425 |
| All franchised centers | 2,049 | $1,084,034 |
The system median is $973,702, the floor is $189,911 and the ceiling is $5,962,733. Only 821 centers, 40.1% of the sample, beat the system average, which is what a long right tail does to a mean. Plan against the median.
Traffic is the number worth staring at. System average vehicle count fell from 9,143 in 2023 to 8,749 in 2024 to 8,463 in 2025, while average sales climbed from $1,040,070 to $1,084,034 over the same stretch. Fewer cars, more revenue per car. That is a pricing story, and pricing stories have a ceiling.
New centers land well below the system. Eleven of them finished their first full calendar year in 2025 with average net adjusted sales of $753,064 and a median of $767,222, spread from $349,082 to $1,224,993. The 26 centers whose first full year was 2024 averaged $937,668 in 2025.
What Item 19 never provides is a cost line. Every table is sales or vehicle counts. There is no rent, no labor, no product cost, no EBITDA. A franchisee at the $973,702 median could be comfortable or underwater, and this disclosure cannot tell you which. Our Valvoline Item 19 deep dive shows what a quick lube disclosure looks like when the franchisor does publish expenses.
| Jiffy Lube (2026 FDD) | Take 5 (2025 FDD) | |
|---|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $35,000 | $45,000 |
| Investment, conversion | not stated separately | $287,145 to $1,013,587 |
| Investment, new build | $211,000 to $510,000 | $912,248 to $2,053,642 |
| Royalty | 4%, or 3% if paid on time | 7% |
| Advertising | 1.5% national plus 2.5% local | 5% |
| Franchised units | 1,765 | 432 |
| Company or affiliate units | 318 | 710 |
| Item 19 sample | 2,049 franchised centers | 298 affiliate-owned centers |
| Item 19 headline | $1,084,034 average sales | $1,327,808 median gross sales |
Both investment ranges exclude real estate, so they are comparable on that axis. Take 5 costs roughly twice as much to build and carries a royalty and marketing load near 12%, against 7% to 8% at Jiffy Lube. In exchange, that FDD discloses expenses down to EBITDA. The catch is the segment label: those 298 centers are affiliate-owned, not franchisee-owned. Jiffy Lube gives you a far larger and cleaner franchisee sample and then stops at the revenue line. Our head-to-head on the two fastest-growing quick lube systems covers how they price the same opportunity.
Item 20 recorded 51 transfers of franchised centers to new owners in 2025, after 63 in 2024 and 45 in 2023. Sixty-seven franchised centers opened in 2025 and 21 were terminated. Against that, the franchisor projects 13 new franchised outlets for the next fiscal year and lists 5 signed franchise agreements whose outlets have not opened. Most of the movement in this system is existing centers changing hands.
The document hints at who the buyers are. Item 6 prices an optional data service in bands of 1 to 25 stores, 26 to 99 stores, and more than 99 stores. Nobody writes a pricing tier for hundred-unit owners unless hundred-unit owners exist.
Territory is narrow and specific. Item 12 gives you a three-mile ring inside which Jiffy Lube will not open or license another center without your consent, and no right of first refusal on anything outside it. Item 15 is looser than most: the center must be under your personal supervision or that of a manager who has completed the operations training course, so a trained-manager structure is contemplated rather than forbidden. For the wider category, our auto repair franchise rankings put Jiffy Lube next to its service-heavy competitors.
Get the full Jiffy Lube FDD analysis for $49 and see the Item 7, Item 19 and Item 20 detail laid out against the rest of the automotive category.
Not sure which franchise fits you yet?
Take our free 2-minute quiz. Tell us your capital, experience, and goals; we surface the brands worth researching. When you've narrowed your list, our full FDD reports are $49.
Take the free quiz Curious what you get? See a sample report →
Take the Jiffy Lube numbers with you.
We'll email you the Jiffy Lube FDD data sheet: a one-page PDF with the Item 7 investment range, initial franchise fee, royalty, and the Item 19 revenue headline. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
✓ Check your inbox
The Jiffy Lube data sheet is on its way.
The only franchise report written entirely for the buyer. 12 sections covering financial risks, legal obligations, and a personalized recommendation.
Browse Franchise Library See a real sample report →
$49 per brand · $99 for a 3-brand pack
is jiffy lube a franchisejiffy lube franchise costoil change franchisequick lube businessJiffy Lube Internationalitem 19Automotive franchise
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.
The 2026 FDD estimates $211,000 to $510,000 for a new freestanding service center, excluding land and building. That total covers a $35,000 initial franchise fee paid in two parts, $125,000 to $325,000 of equipment, signs and fixtures, $20,000 to $30,000 of opening inventory, $16,000 to $40,000 for first month's rent and a security deposit, and $45,000 of working capital for six months. Adding the line items yourself gives $232,000 to $520,000, which is the range printed on the document's own cover page. If you buy the real estate rather than lease it, Item 7 footnote 2 estimates $300,000 to over $800,000 for the site plus $700,000 to $1,200,000 to build a four-bay center.
Shell, through two intermediate companies. Item 1 of the 2026 FDD states that Jiffy Lube International, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pennzoil-Quaker State Company, which does business as SOPUS Products, and that SOPUS Products is a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell USA, Inc., which reports up through Shell Petroleum, Inc. and Shell Petroleum N.V. to Shell plc. SOPUS Products is also the supplier: franchisees buy Pennzoil, Quaker State and Shell branded lubricants from it under the Pacesetter Supply Agreement, and the royalty rises from 4% to 5% if that supply agreement is terminated.
Take 5, by a wide margin at the top of the range. Take 5's 2025 FDD puts a ground-up center at $912,248 to $2,053,642 and a conversion at $287,145 to $1,013,587, both excluding real estate, on a $45,000 fee, a 7% royalty and a 5% marketing contribution. Jiffy Lube's 2026 FDD puts a new center at $211,000 to $510,000 excluding real estate, on a $35,000 fee, a 4% royalty and a 4% advertising floor. Take 5 also discloses expenses down to EBITDA, but only for 298 affiliate-owned centers, while Jiffy Lube discloses sales for 2,049 franchised ones.
Jiffy Lube's FDD does not answer that. Item 19 reports net adjusted sales and vehicle counts and nothing else: no rent, no labor, no product cost, no profit line at any level. The 2025 figures show a $1,084,034 system average and a $973,702 median across 2,049 franchised centers, with a floor of $189,911 and a ceiling of $5,962,733. Only 40.1% of centers cleared the average, which is what a long right tail does to a mean. To convert a sales number into an owner income number you have to build the P&L yourself from validation calls.
Yes, but the system is built around multi-unit operators. Item 20 recorded 51 transfers of existing centers to new owners in 2025 and projects 13 new franchised outlets for the next fiscal year, so most activity is centers changing hands rather than fresh single-unit builds. Item 5 offers fee waivers on second through fifth agreements under the Significant Growth Funding and Build to Suit programs, and Item 6 prices an optional data service in bands topping out at more than 99 stores. Those provisions were written for buyers who already own centers.
This page is part of VetMyFranchise. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt