# Item 19 Trap Brands 2026: When the Average Hides a Disaster > 14 franchise brands where Item 19's average masks a brutal top-quartile-vs-bottom-quartile spread. Real P25/P50/P75 numbers from the 2026 FDD set. **Last updated**: 2026-06-05 **URL**: https://vetmyfranchise.com/blog/item-19-trap-brands-2026-when-average-lies?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md > **Quick answer:** Across 2,000+ franchise FDDs, 14 brands show a P75-to-P25 gap above $1.9M — meaning typical bottom-half operators earn a small fraction of typical top-half operators while the headline 'average' looks healthy. The list is dominated by home-service brands where territory and operator effort drive most variance. Use the brand's P25, not the average, as your year-three downside case. ## The Average-Revenue Trick: How It Works Open any franchisor's sales deck and the Item 19 slide will lead with a single confident dollar figure. System average unit volume. $1.4 million. $2.8 million. Whatever. The number lands cleanly, anchors the conversation, and gives the buyer something to plug into a back-of-envelope projection. The trick is that the average is the worst summary statistic for a buyer modeling year-three cash flow. It's pulled up by a small number of high-AUV outliers, and in most franchise systems those outliers are not representative of what a new operator can build. They're mature units in dense markets, often owned by multi-unit veterans who've been running the playbook for ten years. Their numbers are real. They're just not yours. The right number to anchor on is the P25 — the 25th-percentile revenue figure, the bottom of the middle half of the system. If you can't beat the P25 within three years of opening, you're below the bottom half of the brand. If the P25 looks survivable to you, the deal has a chance. If it doesn't, the average doesn't matter. This piece is a list of 14 brands where the P75-to-P25 spread is wide enough that the headline average is doing a lot of misleading work. We pulled the data from the 2026 set of judge-verified Item 19 disclosures across the VetMyFranchise database (2,000+ FDDs total, filtered to brands with sample sizes of 10 or more units to keep the statistics meaningful). ## How to Spot a Trap Item 19 in 60 Seconds A few patterns to scan for before you read a single line of the actual disclosure: - **Average reported, no median, no quartiles.** This is the cleanest tell. A brand with a healthy distribution reports both. A brand whose median is far below its average usually doesn't volunteer the median. - **High-AUV "top performers" callouts in the sales deck.** When the deck spends time on the top decile, it's because the rest of the distribution doesn't tell the same story. - **Subset reporting.** Item 19 only includes "stores open for at least 18 months" — fine on its face, but when paired with a system where most units are new, the disclosed group is a small mature cohort whose numbers don't predict ramp. - **Wide cost ranges without revenue cohorts.** Item 7 says the build is $500K to $1.5M. Item 19 reports one system average. A 3x build cost spread inside one revenue average is almost certainly hiding a wide revenue spread too. If you see two or three of these, the average is doing more selling than disclosing. ## The 14 Brands With the Widest P75-to-P25 Gap These are brands with judge-verified Item 19 disclosures, sample sizes of 10+ units, and a P75-to-P25 gap above $1.9M. The gap column is the dollar difference between a top-quartile and bottom-quartile unit — the practical span of revenue you might land inside if you bought this brand today. | Brand | Units in Item 19 | P25 revenue | Median revenue | P75 revenue | P75–P25 gap | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| | [Mr. Rooter](/franchise/mr-rooter-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) Plumbing | 188 | $320K | $1.27M | $4.98M | $4.66M | | [McAlister's](/franchise/mcalisters-franchisor-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) Deli | 464 | $543K | $1.79M | $5.03M | $4.48M | | America's Swimming Pool Co. | 124 | $39K | $572K | $3.94M | $3.90M | | [Aire Serv](/franchise/aire-serv-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) | 172 | $576K | $944K | $4.09M | $3.52M | | [Mister Sparky](/franchise/mister-sparky-franchising-spe-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) | 146 | $194K | $580K | $3.54M | $3.34M | | One Hour Heating & Air | 359 | $150K | $790K | $3.33M | $3.18M | | Ellie Mental Health | 167 | $46K | $765K | $2.88M | $2.83M | | Urban Air Adventure Park | 123 | $3.27M | $4.35M | $5.95M | $2.68M | | [Rainbow](/franchise/rainbow-international-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) Restoration | 275 | $109K | $612K | $2.78M | $2.67M | | [Buffalo Wild Wings](/franchise/buffalo-wild-wings-international-inc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) | 527 | $2.37M | $3.44M | $4.88M | $2.50M | | PuroClean | 387 | $100K | $519K | $2.56M | $2.46M | | [AlphaGraphics](/franchise/alphagraphics-inc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) | 221 | $399K | $1.03M | $2.78M | $2.38M | | Schlotzsky's | 204 | $396K | $1.05M | $2.75M | $2.36M | | [Touching Hearts](/franchise/touching-hearts-inc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) at Home | 62 | $256K | $935K | $2.55M | $2.30M | A few patterns jump off the table. Home-service brands — [Mr. Rooter](/franchise/mr-rooter-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md), [Aire Serv](/franchise/aire-serv-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md), ASP, [Mister Sparky](/franchise/mister-sparky-franchising-spe-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md), One Hour, [Rainbow](/franchise/rainbow-international-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md), PuroClean — dominate the widest spreads. The reason is structural: home services are a route-density business, and bottom-quartile operators are typically newer, in lower-density territories, or running with one truck where a top-quartile operator runs six. The brand is the same. The business isn't. The [Mr. Rooter](/franchise/mr-rooter-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) line is the clearest illustration. P25 is $320K. P75 is just under $5M. Same brand, same playbook, 15x revenue difference between the bottom and top of the middle half of the system. If you bought [Mr. Rooter](/franchise/mr-rooter-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) and benchmarked your underwriting to the average, you'd be planning for a business that exists in roughly the top quarter of franchisees. [McAlister's](/franchise/mcalisters-franchisor-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md) Deli is a different shape but similar story. The median is $1.79M but the P25 is $543K — meaning a quarter of stores in the disclosure are running at roughly the cost-of-goods break-even line. That doesn't mean a quarter of stores are losing money, but it means a quarter of stores are running tight enough that one bad year tips them over. ## Sign up to keep going This is one of the cross-brand patterns we pulled out of the full Item 19 transparency dataset. The full leaderboard — including the brands ranked by P25 disclosure quality, the brands that don't disclose quartiles at all, and the brands where the average and median are close enough that the average is actually safe to use — lives in our [Item 19 transparency leaderboard report](/reports/item19-transparency-leaderboard?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md). For a brand-by-brand AUV ranking, see the [AUV leaderboard](/reports/auv-leaderboard?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md). If you're holding an FDD right now, the $4.99 Tier 2 report on any of these brands includes the full quartile distribution, sample size methodology, and a year-three downside model built off the P25, not the average. ## What "Judge-Verified" Item 19 Data Actually Means Every brand in the table above carries a "supported" verdict on its Item 19 disclosure. That's our internal grading: an AI judge reads the disclosure, checks whether the quartile or median claim is actually substantiated in the underlying tables (not just asserted), and flags brands where the disclosure says one thing and the data shows another. Brands with "unsupported" verdicts didn't make this list because their headline numbers can't be cross-checked. The grade is not a fraud signal. It's a transparency signal. A brand can be a great business with an "unsupported" Item 19 verdict — they just didn't publish enough detail for us to confirm the average is what they say it is. ## Three Brands That Disclose Item 19 the Right Way Not every brand on the wide-spread list deserves a frown. A few of them disclose so completely that the average isn't actually misleading — you just have to read past it. **Urban Air Adventure Park** has a wide spread ($2.68M from P25 to P75), but the P25 itself is $3.27M. The whole distribution is high. A buyer who looks only at the average sees $4.5M and underwrites optimistically; a buyer who looks at the P25 sees $3.27M and underwrites realistically. The disclosure is honest in both directions. **[Buffalo Wild Wings](/franchise/buffalo-wild-wings-international-inc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md)** publishes the full quartile range, the year-cohort breakdown, and the regional split. A buyer who reads the full disclosure can pin down their expected revenue band within a few hundred thousand dollars. The brand isn't hiding anything; the wide spread reflects real geographic variance, not survivorship. **[AlphaGraphics](/franchise/alphagraphics-inc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md)** publishes by tenure cohort, which is exactly what a buyer wants to see for a service brand where revenue ramps over multiple years. The P25-to-P75 gap looks wide overall, but inside each tenure cohort the spread narrows substantially. A buyer who reads the cohort table doesn't need to use the system average at all. The pattern is the same in all three cases: the brand gave you what you need to underwrite conservatively. Whether the average is misleading depends on whether you let it be. ## What to Do If You're Already in Due Diligence on a Trap Brand If you've already received a deck quoting the system average and you're starting to suspect the distribution is uglier than the headline, the move is to ask three specific questions in writing. First: "What is the P25 and P75 revenue for stores in the disclosure with at least 24 months of operating tenure?" The 24-month filter strips out the ramp-stage stores that drag the average down and lets you see what mature operators are actually earning. If the franchisor can't or won't answer, that's your answer. Second: "Of the stores below the system median revenue, what percentage are profitable on an owner-operator basis?" This is the question most franchisors don't want to answer because it forces them to disclose how bottom-half stores actually perform. A confident franchisor will give you a number. A nervous one will redirect. Third: "Can you connect me with three franchisees whose AUV is closest to the system P25?" The franchisor will offer to connect you with top performers. You want bottom-half performers. The mismatch in their reaction tells you more than the eventual call will. If the brand passes all three filters, the wide spread probably reflects real operator-driven variance and your job is to convince yourself you'll land above P50. If the brand fails any of them, the spread is hiding something and the average was doing the work it was supposed to do — for the franchisor, not for you. ## Brands mentioned in this post - [Mr. Rooter](/franchise/mr-rooter-spv-llc?utm_source=claude&utm_medium=ai_referral&utm_campaign=vmf_agent_md)