Seven auto repair franchises compared on disclosed Item 19 revenue and on the sample definition sitting behind each number, taken from FDD text.
Quick answer Meineke's 2025 FDD discloses a $913,607 median, but only for the 549 of its 716 centers that were open two full years and ran five or more repair bays. Christian Brothers, Midas, Maaco, CARSTAR, and Jiffy Lube each cut their Item 19 sample differently, so compare sample definitions before revenue.
Meineke’s 2025 FDD reports median gross revenues of $913,607. The same disclosure, a few lines later, reports $643,588.
Both numbers describe Meineke centers in the fiscal year that ended December 28, 2024. The first covers the 549 centers that qualified for the earnings table. The second covers the 167 that did not, because they had been open under two full years or ran fewer than five repair bays. Meineke deserves credit for printing the second number at all. Most franchisors drop the units that fail their filter and never say how those units performed.
That gap is the problem with every auto repair ranking you have read. Forty-four automotive brands in our database file an Item 19, and 23 of them do it on a sample of 20 units or more. Almost none define the sample the same way, so a revenue-ordered list is really a list of who wrote the most generous footnote. Sort by sample definition first and the order changes.
| Brand | System size | Item 19 sample | What a unit must be to count | Disclosed median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CARSTAR | 471 facilities | 397 | open before the fiscal year, reported all 12 months | $2,579,601 |
| Maaco | 363 centers | 317 | open 2 full years, full production site | $1,348,304 |
| Tuffy | 101 franchised centers | 59 | open 2 full calendar years, 4+ bays | $1,343,137 |
| Meineke | 716 centers | 549 | open 2 full years, 5+ repair bays | $913,607 |
| Jiffy Lube | 2,049 reporting centers | 2,049 | open all 12 months of 2025 | $973,702 |
| Midas | 889 franchisees | 856 | operated the entire 2025 calendar year | $1,028,955 and $1,337,678 across the middle quartiles |
| Christian Brothers | 326 stores | 302 | franchisee-owned, open the full 2025 calendar year | published as a P&L, not a single figure |
Every figure above comes from the brand’s own Item 19 text. Note what happens to the inclusion rate as you read down: Jiffy Lube counts essentially every franchised store, Tuffy counts 58% of its franchised centers, and both call the result a median.
Christian Brothers Automotive has no entry in the median column because it declines to reduce its disclosure to one number. That is the best-argued Item 19 in the category, and the reason has nothing to do with the size of the figures.
Its 2026 FDD covers the 302 franchisee-owned stores open the entire 2025 calendar year, excluding the 24 that opened mid-year. Schedule 19.2 breaks out net sales, cost of goods sold, gross profit, general and administrative expenses, net operating income, and total owner benefit by store age, from first year through five-plus. Schedule 19.3 gives total owner benefit for the top and bottom 20% of performers. Schedule 19.1B tracks the same 280 stores across two full years so you can see whether the cohort grew.
Then a footnote no other brand in this category comes close to matching: five of the 302 stores ran a net operating loss in 2025, itemized at $116,330 and $84,620 for two first-year locations, $243,763 for a fourth-year location, and $100,163 and $38,440 for two mature ones. A franchisor voluntarily naming its money-losing units is rare enough to be worth a discovery-day question on its own.
The price of that transparency is a royalty structure you should model carefully before you get excited. Christian Brothers charges 50% of split profits rather than a percentage of sales, and the Item 19 tables normalize every store to a $60,000 approved owner salary so that historic franchisees on older deal terms are shown on current economics. That is defensible math and it is also a thumb near the scale. If your own salary requirement is $120,000, the disclosed owner benefit overstates what is left for you. Entry runs $515,250 to $650,400 on an $85,000 franchise fee, the highest fee in this group.
Midas had 889 franchisees at the end of 2025 and reports on the 856 that operated the full twelve months, which is a 96% inclusion rate and the cleanest large sample among the repair-format brands.
The quartile table is where it earns attention. Top quarter: $2,141,832 average, $1,732,617 median, topping out at $6,545,113. Bottom quarter: $676,751 average, $699,267 median, bottom of $236,466. The middle two quartiles land at $1,028,955 and $1,337,678 median, which is the honest planning range for a new franchisee with no book of business. Buyers anchor on the top-quartile number because brokers quote it. The bottom quartile is 214 shops of a mature national system, and it is the more instructive column.
The brand separately reports on a 438-shop cost sample, those with expense data it considers reliable: 27.9% cost of goods sold, 29.6% total labor, 58.9% total operating expense, and 13.2% net income from operations. Item 7 runs $385,450 to $940,050 on a $35,000 fee for a new eight-bay shop, and that table assumes a lease. Buy the site instead and Midas estimates $615,000 to $1,250,000 for land plus $1,250,000 to $2,050,000 to build, none of it inside the headline range. On the tire-led alternative, we compared the two in Big O Tires vs Midas; Big O reports a $2,824,713 average across 457 stores, which is tire volume rather than better repair economics. Discount Tire, the other name buyers raise in tire retail, is not franchised at all, as we cover in is Discount Tire a franchise. Goodyear sits in between, with company-owned auto service centers alongside franchised dealer outlets, which we sort out in is Goodyear a franchise.
Tuffy, filed under the legal name Gimex Properties Corp., Inc., applies the tightest filter in the category. Of 101 franchised centers, 59 made the sample by clearing two full calendar years and four bays. Those 59 posted a $1,343,137 median on gross sales, with a $468,196 low and a $4,916,047 high. A 58% inclusion rate is not disqualifying, but it means 42 centers are invisible to you, and Tuffy, unlike Meineke, does not tell you how they did.
Browse the full category with sample definitions attached on our automotive franchise directory.
CARSTAR posts the highest disclosed median here at $2,579,601, and the reason is structural rather than operational. Collision work is insurer-funded, ticket sizes run in the thousands, and CARSTAR’s 397-facility sample had been operating an average of 9.7 years, mostly as conversions of established independent body shops.
Read the exclusions before you get comfortable. CARSTAR started with 471 franchised facilities and removed 48 that opened during the fiscal year, 26 that missed a month of reporting, and 32 that closed. Closed units are excluded from every Item 19 in this post, which is standard practice and still worth naming: the disclosed distribution is a distribution of survivors. The bottom half of CARSTAR’s sample carries a $1,700,434 median and a $114,841 floor, and the top half reaches $18,637,343, so the spread inside one brand is wider than the spread between brands.
The cost side needs the same care, because CARSTAR files two Item 7 tables and aggregators splice them. Converting a body shop you already run is $23,500 to $165,300. Building a new facility is $298,200 to $804,300. Anyone quoting “$23,500 to $804,300” has stitched the floor of one deal to the ceiling of another.
Maaco’s 317-center sample discloses a $1,348,304 median against a $1,615,904 average, a gap that tells you the top of the distribution is doing heavy lifting. Only 35% of centers met or exceeded the average. Maaco’s Item 7 is the one figure in this category most often quoted wrong, because it spans two formats: $196,000 to $644,000 to convert an existing body shop, and $728,500 to $3,994,000 to build ground-up or retrofit a non-automotive building. Both are real. Quoting the $3,994,000 as though it applies to a conversion deal is how buyers end up over-reserving by a factor of six.
Jiffy Lube’s 2026 FDD is the largest honest sample in automotive franchising: 2,049 franchised service centers open all twelve months of 2025, no performance filter, system median net adjusted sales of $973,702 against a $1,084,034 average, with a $189,911 low and a $5,962,733 high. Only 40.1% of stores beat the average. Item 7 runs $211,000 to $510,000 on a 3.0% to 4.0% royalty, the lowest royalty band in this post. We cover the brand’s ownership and franchise structure separately in is Jiffy Lube a franchise.
The category-wide caution is that the two most-searched quick lube brands do not disclose franchisee results at all. Valvoline Instant Oil Change labels its disclosed revenue company-operated centers, and Take 5 labels its affiliate-owned centers. We took that comparison apart in Take 5 vs Valvoline. A buyer setting Jiffy Lube’s franchisee median next to either of those headline figures is comparing a franchise disclosure to a corporate one.
The most instructive Item 19 in the automotive category belongs to a brand that does not repair cars. SystemForward America, LLC franchises Pop-A-Lock, the roadside and locksmith system, and its 2026 FDD is the clearest demonstration of segment selection in the database.
It discloses a $4,637,356 median. The segment is the top 30% of franchisees who own five or more outlets. The same page discloses $1,733,891 for the bottom 30% of five-plus-outlet owners, and $49,201 for the bottom 30% of franchisees owning fewer than five outlets, a band whose range starts at $7,880. The middle 40% appears nowhere. Neither does the top 30% of single-territory owners. And in all three disclosed bands, the reported median is identical to the reported average, which no real distribution produces.
So the number a buyer would repeat, $4.64 million, describes multi-unit operators running several territories at once, against an entry cost of $117,565 to $190,610 for a single territory. Read next to the same document’s disclosure that a comparable single-territory cohort grosses about $49,000, the headline is not false. It is answering a question nobody asked. Our guide to misleading earnings claims walks through the other common variants, and what Item 19 is covers the mechanics if you are early in this.
Pull the sample definition before the number, every time. Then ask each franchisor two questions their FDD will not answer: what did the units you excluded earn, and what did the units that closed last year earn before they closed. Meineke answers the first voluntarily. Nobody answers the second, and the ones who try to talk you out of asking are telling you something.
On capital, the real tiers are conversion versus construction, not brand versus brand, and you cannot see that split in any aggregator’s summary range. Converting a shop you already operate runs $23,500 to $165,300 at CARSTAR and $196,000 to $644,000 at Maaco, because the building and the customers exist before you sign. Building new runs $298,200 to $804,300 at CARSTAR, $728,500 to $3,994,000 at Maaco, $385,450 to $940,050 at Midas on a leased site, and $515,250 to $650,400 at Christian Brothers. Meineke files one table and prices the distinction inside it: $224,898 assumes a 3,400 square foot five-bay location, $1,200,818 assumes 7,000 square feet and six bays. The bay count is the business.
For the wider industry picture, including dealerships, EV service, and the brands outside repair, start with our automotive franchise overview. To see where these medians sit against every disclosing brand in our database, the AUV leaderboard ranks systems by disclosed unit volume with the sample definition attached to each row, which is the only way that ranking means anything.
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best auto repair franchisesauto repair franchise costautomotive franchise opportunitiesItem 19Christian Brothers AutomotiveMidas franchise costoil change 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.
No Item 19 in this category answers that, because almost none of them disclose profit. Christian Brothers Automotive is the exception: its 2026 FDD reports net operating income and total owner benefit by store age for 302 franchisee-owned stores, and it names the five stores that ran a negative NOI in 2025. Every other brand here discloses revenue only, which tells you nothing about what the owner keeps.
Meineke estimates $224,898 to $1,200,818 for a leased location, with the low end assuming a 3,400 square foot five-bay site and the high end a 7,000 square foot six-bay site. Midas estimates $385,450 to $940,050 for a new eight-bay shop, also on a lease. Christian Brothers estimates $515,250 to $650,400 on an $85,000 franchise fee. Watch the brands that file more than one Item 7 table, because summary sites splice them: Maaco is $196,000 to $644,000 to convert an existing body shop and $728,500 to $3,994,000 to build ground-up, while CARSTAR is $23,500 to $165,300 to convert and $298,200 to $804,300 to build.
Not for any brand covered here. These systems recruit operators who hire licensed technicians rather than turn wrenches themselves. What the FDD will not tell you is whether your market has technicians available at the wage your pro forma assumes. That is the constraint that decides these deals, and it appears nowhere in Item 7.
Christian Brothers restricts its Item 19 to franchisee-owned stores. Meineke, Maaco, CARSTAR, and Big O Tires report franchised units only. Midas reports franchisees. Watch the quick lube category instead: Valvoline Instant Oil Change labels its disclosed revenue company-operated centers, and Take 5 labels its affiliate-owned centers, so neither headline number describes a franchisee.
Vehicle age supports the demand argument, and average repair tickets in these disclosures back it up: Tuffy reports a $432 median repair ticket across 59 centers, and Midas reports median revenue per customer visit of $265 in its bottom quartile against $517 in its top. What no Item 19 discloses is how quickly discretionary work such as collision cosmetics and cooling system flushes gets deferred when household budgets tighten.
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