Kiddie Academy vs The Learning Experience: 2026 FDD franchise fees, Item 7 investment, Item 19 revenue, and expense disclosure for both childcare systems.
Quick answer Kiddie Academy charges a $150,000 initial fee and The Learning Experience charges $60,000. The gap closes at Item 7, where TLE adds a $75,000 site coordination fee or a $250,000 to $312,500 site development charge. Both systems disclose median center revenue near $2.1 million.
Kiddie Academy’s 2026 FDD sets the initial fee at $150,000. The Learning Experience sets its franchise fee at $60,000. Every comparison article stops there, and that is the least useful number in either document.
Read both Item 7 tables and most of the gap disappears. TLE’s $60,000 buys the franchise. Building the center is a second transaction with the same franchisor. Develop and construct the site yourself and you sign a Site Coordination Addendum and pay TLE a nonrefundable $75,000 site coordination fee. Hand the job to TLE and you sign a Site Development Service Charge Addendum instead, at $250,000 to $312,500 for a facility of roughly 12,500 square feet. Money to the franchisor before you open: $135,000 on the self-build route, or $310,000 to $372,500 on the turnkey route.
Kiddie Academy’s $150,000 is one line, payable in four installments tied to signing, site acceptance, permit issuance, and loan funding. Item 7 prints it as a range of $70,000 to $150,000 because Item 5 discloses reduced-fee programs that can bring it down. Against TLE’s turnkey path, Kiddie Academy at full price is less than half the franchisor-side cost.
So the $90,000 gap is real only if you compare one line to one line. Neither brand is the cheap one. They just charge for site development in different places.
| Metric (2026 FDD) | Kiddie Academy | The Learning Experience |
|---|---|---|
| Initial fee to franchisor | $150,000 (Item 7 shows $70,000 to $150,000) | $60,000 |
| Site fee to franchisor | None | $75,000, or $250,000 to $312,500 turnkey |
| Item 7, leased or turnkey center | $590,000 to $1,010,000 | $805,799 to $1,563,499 |
| Item 7, you buy and build | $4,935,000 to $8,530,000 | $2,264,799 to $5,658,799 |
| Royalty | 7% of gross revenues | 7% of gross revenue |
| Brand fund | 2% | 1%, franchisor may raise to 2.5% |
| Franchised units | 363 | 436 |
| Company-owned units | None disclosed | 31 |
| Item 19 sample | 293 franchisee-owned academies open 24+ months | 266 franchised centers open 48+ months |
| Item 19 median revenue | $2,075,740 | $2,168,511 |
| Franchisee expense data | Labor, occupancy, gross profit | None disclosed |
TLE’s $2,168,511 looks like a $92,771 win. It is not comparing the same thing.
Kiddie Academy defines its mature group as academies open 24 months or more, and reports 293 of them for calendar 2025. Average gross revenue $2,193,815, median $2,075,740, average age about 119 months. The 22 younger academies get their own table at a $1,465,325 median.
The Learning Experience splits its franchised centers at 48 months. Mature centers, open more than four years, numbered 266 in 2025 at a $2,186,393 average and a $2,168,511 median. Intermediate centers, open 24 to 47 months, numbered 59 at a $1,941,423 average. Weight those two cohorts together and TLE’s franchised centers open 24 months or more average roughly $2,141,900 across 325 locations. Kiddie Academy’s comparable figure is $2,193,815 across 293.
Run them on the same clock and the ranking flips by about 2.4%, which is noise. TLE’s headline advantage comes from a four-year filter that Kiddie Academy does not apply. This is the failure mode our post on Item 19 averages, medians, and survivorship bias exists to catch, and it shows up in almost every childcare comparison published.
One more definitional note on TLE’s Statement 1: the tables mix franchised and company-owned centers in the narrative, then break them out. The 266-center figure is franchised only. Its corporate centers ran higher, $2,574,296 median across 17 locations, which is worth knowing before a franchise development rep quotes you a blended number.
This is the wider gap, and almost nobody weighs it.
Kiddie Academy’s Item 19 carries four expense lines for all 293 mature academies. At the median: labor $983,102, occupancy $363,623, miscellaneous $257,451, gross profit $479,211. It then splits the group into quartiles by gross profit. The top 73 academies report $991,054 against $2,932,736 of revenue; the bottom 73 report $105,058 against $1,343,525. The weakest quarter of ramping academies lands at negative $437,520.
Read those two ends together and you have the actual risk shape of a childcare center. Same brand, same manuals, and a spread from roughly $105,000 to roughly $991,000 in gross profit. Note also that Kiddie Academy’s gross profit deducts labor, occupancy, and a miscellaneous line that already includes royalties and brand fund, but not supplies, food, or insurance premiums. It is not net income and the FDD says so.
The Learning Experience publishes expense data too, in Statement 2, for 17 mature company-owned centers. Footnote 2 explains the omission for franchisees plainly: TLE cannot poll cost data through its point of sale system and franchisee reports are not handled consistently. The franchisor then says it has no reason to believe franchised-center expenses materially differ, while noting that company centers may enjoy economies of scale franchisees do not.
That is a candid footnote. It is also an admission that a TLE buyer gets a top-line number and nothing underneath it. If you want a cost model for a TLE center, you build it from validation calls. Kiddie Academy hands you one.
Working both documents side by side is exactly what our comparison tool is built for, and the best daycare and preschool franchises roundup puts these two against Celebree, Lightbridge, and Primrose on the same disclosure standard.
Both ceilings look like extraction errors. Both are real, and the line items add to them exactly.
Kiddie Academy prints two tables. A leased academy totals $590,000 to $1,010,000. Buying land and building a roughly 10,000 square foot academy totals $4,935,000 to $8,530,000, with real estate acquisition and construction alone at $4,220,000 to $6,625,000. Note 4 gives the underlying rates: vacant land at $12.63 to $35 per square foot, new construction at $330 to $480, an existing building purchase at $335 to $675.
TLE prints four. Turnkey development runs $805,799 to $1,563,499. Building your own site runs $2,264,799 to $5,658,799 and excludes the cost of land. Acquiring an existing center runs $937,300 to $3,393,000. A fourth-center deal reaches $22,813,196 at the top.
So a $590,000 quote and an $8,530,000 quote describe the same brand and different balance sheets. Whether you lease a shell or own the dirt drives more of your outcome than the franchise fee, which is the argument for reading our lease negotiation guide before you tour a site.
Kiddie Academy requires a certified full-time Director on premises, and separately requires you, a principal, or the personal guarantor to devote full time and best efforts to managing the academy. Multi-unit owners may divide that time across their academies. It reads as an owner-operator document.
The Learning Experience requires a Center Director at 40 hours per week and recommends that you devote substantial time. Recommends, not requires. For a buyer building toward three centers with an area manager, that difference in wording is worth more than the fee gap.
Unit trajectory leans the same direction. TLE’s Item 19 counts 366 US centers at the end of 2023, 417 in 2024, and 465 in 2025. Kiddie Academy went from 344 franchised academies to 363 over the same last year.
Pick Kiddie Academy if you want the strongest disclosure in the category and intend to run the academy yourself. You get quartile gross profit data, a full expense stack, and a franchisee-only sample of 293. You also get a document that expects you present.
Pick The Learning Experience if you want the franchisor to deliver a finished building and you are structuring toward multiple centers with hired directors. You pay for that in the site development charge, and you accept that no franchised-center cost data exists in the filing.
The uncomfortable version: both systems disclose about $2.1 million of revenue per mature center, both charge a 7% royalty, and only one shows you what is left. If you are pulling both filings, our $99 three-pack covers these two plus a third childcare brand with the Item 19 samples labeled the way they are above.
For category context, start with the child education franchise guide or the Primrose Schools cost breakdown, which sits in the same capital tier and discloses on yet another sample definition.
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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.
On a leased or turnkey center, Kiddie Academy. Its Item 7 range for a leased facility runs $590,000 to $1,010,000 against TLE's $805,799 to $1,563,499 for a center TLE develops. The franchise fee favors TLE at $60,000 versus $150,000, but TLE's site fees add $75,000 to $312,500 back on top.
They are close enough that the sample definition decides it. TLE discloses a $2,168,511 median on 266 franchised centers open more than 48 months. Kiddie Academy discloses $2,075,740 on 293 academies open 24 months or more, a younger cohort. Weight TLE's two published cohorts to the same 24-month cutoff and its average lands near $2,141,900 against Kiddie Academy's $2,193,815.
The 2026 FDD publishes two Item 7 tables. A leased academy runs $590,000 to $1,010,000. Buying land and building a roughly 10,000 square foot academy runs $4,935,000 to $8,530,000, with real estate and construction alone at $4,220,000 to $6,625,000. The initial fee is $150,000, shown in Item 7 as $70,000 to $150,000 because reduction programs exist.
Item 5 says it covers franchisee training, Academy Director training, site selection, and background checks, and it is payable in four installments tied to signing, site acceptance, permit issuance, and loan funding. The comparison that matters is total money paid to the franchisor before opening, and on that basis TLE's $60,000 fee plus its site charges reaches $135,000 to $372,500.
Kiddie Academy's 2026 FDD reports 363 franchised academies as of December 31, 2025, up from 344 a year earlier. The Learning Experience reports 436 franchised centers plus 31 company-owned. TLE's Item 19 counts 465 US centers at the end of 2025 against 417 in 2024 and 366 in 2023.
TLE's document is friendlier to it. Item 15 requires a Center Director working at least 40 hours per week and only recommends that the owner devote substantial time. Kiddie Academy's Item 15 requires you or a principal guarantor to devote full time and best efforts to managing the academy, though multi-unit owners may split that time across their academies.
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