No. Chipotle runs 4,186 company-operated restaurants and franchises none of them. Qdoba's 2025 FDD is the franchised alternative at $548,100 to $1,294,000.
Quick answer No. Chipotle does not franchise in the United States. As of June 30, 2026 the company reported 4,186 company-operated restaurants and just 15 international licensed restaurants, so there is no FDD, no franchise fee, and nothing to buy. Qdoba is the franchised equivalent, at $548,100 to $1,294,000 for a traditional restaurant.
No. As of June 30, 2026, Chipotle Mexican Grill reported 4,186 company-operated restaurants and 15 international licensed restaurants. Not one of them is a franchise. There is no franchise fee, no territory map, and no Franchise Disclosure Document, because the company has never registered a domestic offering.
That closes the question and opens a more useful one. Search volume for “chipotle franchise cost” is real money looking for a fast-casual Mexican restaurant to buy, and that money has somewhere to go. It just cannot go here. Panda Express runs the same way on a smaller scale, keeping 2,423 of its 2,607 restaurants company-owned and licensing only 184 inside captive venues.
The three words get used interchangeably in press coverage, and the differences are exactly the ones a buyer cares about.
| Arrangement | Who owns the unit | Who employs the staff | Disclosure document | Chipotle’s use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company-operated | Chipotle | Chipotle | None required | 4,186 restaurants |
| Licensed | A corporate partner | The partner | None required | 15 international restaurants |
| Franchised | An independent buyer | The buyer | FDD required by the FTC Franchise Rule | Zero |
Chipotle’s international expansion runs entirely through the middle row. Alshaya Group took the Middle East in 2023, Alsea took Mexico in 2025, and a joint venture with SPC Group covers Asia. These are country-scale operating companies with existing restaurant portfolios, and the deals are negotiated one at a time rather than offered to a market of buyers. The US, Canada, and Western Europe remain company-owned.
The practical consequence for anyone doing diligence: a license is a private contract. No FDD gets registered, which means no Item 5 fee schedule, no Item 7 investment table, and no Item 19 performance representation. All the material a buyer would normally read simply does not exist.
Lead-generation sites publish a Chipotle franchise cost anyway. Those figures are reverse-engineered from the company’s disclosed build costs per restaurant in its investor materials, then dressed up with an invented franchise fee and royalty. A construction budget is not a franchise offering. The number has no disclosure document behind it, no validation list, and no franchisor to hold to it.
VetMyFranchise pulls Items 5, 7, and 19 out of the filed FDD rather than a brand’s marketing page, which is why the closest real comparison starts at the Qdoba dossier.
Qdoba Franchisor LLC is a Delaware entity formed in September 2023 that became the franchisor in November 2023 as part of a securitization transaction. The restaurants themselves go back to 1995, and the predecessor company began selling franchises in 1997. As of September 28, 2025, the system counted 827 restaurants: 652 franchised and 175 company-operated.
| 12/25 FDD line | Traditional restaurant | Non-traditional restaurant |
|---|---|---|
| Franchise fee | $40,000 | $20,000 |
| Estimated initial investment | $548,100 to $1,294,000 | $234,500 to $898,000 |
| Royalty | 5% of gross sales | 6% of gross sales |
| Marketing fee | 4.5% (franchisees) | 1.75% (licensees) |
| Agreement term | 10 years | 10 years |
Two footnotes matter more than the headline. Both totals exclude real property and liquor licensing, so a franchisee buying or building a freestanding site carries that on top. And Item 7 note 1 mentions a $100,000 cash payment some restaurants receive at opening under an incentive program described in Item 1, which the investment table deliberately does not net out. Ask which sites qualify before you model it.
One correction worth making, because the spliced version circulates widely: Qdoba’s investment range is often quoted as $234,500 to $1,294,000. No single format spans that. The low belongs to the non-traditional table and the high belongs to the traditional one, and a buyer comparing brands on a midpoint is comparing two different businesses averaged together.
Chart 2 of the 12/25 FDD covers 464 franchised restaurants that were open and franchisee-operated for at least one year as of September 28, 2025.
| Quartile, TTM ended 9/28/2025 | Median net sales |
|---|---|
| Top | $2,450,334 |
| Second | $1,859,571 |
| Third | $1,421,970 |
| Bottom | $1,007,528 |
| All 464 restaurants | $1,596,761 |
Average net sales across the group were $1,697,254, the lowest single restaurant did $411,191, and the highest did $5,078,990. A separate chart covering 397 traditional franchised units that report financials through the franchisor’s portal shows average proforma franchisee EBITDA of $254,430, or 15.3% of net sales, against a median of $246,001 and a low of negative $214,733. Occupancy averaged 7.5% of sales, food and paper 27.6%, and salaries and benefits 26.9%.
Now read the exclusion list. Chart 2 leaves out 123 non-traditional restaurants, 13 Canadian restaurants, 5 refranchised units, 38 that opened during the last fiscal year, and 7 closed for 21 or more operating days. That first exclusion is the one to sit with. The format that makes Qdoba look affordable at $234,500 is the same format with no disclosed sales figure attached to it anywhere in the document. Anyone underwriting a non-traditional unit is underwriting on the traditional restaurants’ numbers, which is a substitution the FDD never invites you to make.
| Brand | Franchise fee | Item 7 estimated investment | Royalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qdoba, traditional | $40,000 | $548,100 to $1,294,000 | 5% of gross sales |
| Salsarita’s | $30,000 | $506,400 to $856,100 | 5% to 6% of net revenues |
| Taco John’s, freestanding | $40,000 | $811,400 to $2,034,250 | 5% of net sales |
| Fuzzy’s Taco Shop | $40,000 | $1,049,500 to $3,040,500 | 5% of gross sales |
| Del Taco | $35,000 | $1,497,200 to $3,321,000 | 5% of net sales |
Salsarita’s is sometimes marketed at a $371,400 low end. That figure is the same Item 7 table after subtracting a tenant improvement allowance of up to $135,000 that the franchisee has to negotiate out of a landlord, and the FDD prints both rows so you can see which one you are being quoted. Del Taco and Fuzzy’s sit at the top of the range because their Item 7 tables assume freestanding buildings with drive-thrus rather than in-line space.
Our best Mexican food franchises breakdown ranks the category on unit economics rather than brand recognition, and the Taco Bell franchise cost analysis covers the QSR side of the same customer.
Nothing in Chipotle’s public behavior suggests a domestic franchise program is coming. The company has spent two decades building an operating model around owning the labor, and the international licensing deals it does sign go to partners running hundreds of restaurants already, not to first-time operators. Waiting is not a strategy.
The category is still buyable. It is simply buyable under a different sign, at investment levels that run from roughly $500,000 to well past $3 million depending on format and whether you are building freestanding. Start with a document that actually exists: read the Qdoba FDD analysis, which breaks out Items 5, 7, and 19 line by line.
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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. Chipotle sells no franchises in the United States, and it has never registered a Franchise Disclosure Document for a domestic offering. As of June 30, 2026 the company reported 4,186 company-operated restaurants and 15 international licensed restaurants. The licensed restaurants sit with regional operating companies abroad, not with individual buyers, so any website quoting a Chipotle franchise fee is quoting a number that does not exist.
Chipotle has kept ownership of its restaurants since the beginning, and the operating model explains most of it. The concept runs on a single assembly line where speed of service and ingredient handling are done in the store by hourly staff, and both are things a franchisor can specify in a manual but cannot directly control. Owning the labor means owning the outcome. Chipotle has not published a franchise-specific rationale we can quote, so read that as inference from how the system is built rather than a company statement.
Qdoba, Salsarita's, Taco John's, Fuzzy's Taco Shop, and Del Taco all sell franchises and file FDDs. Entry prices run from $506,400 at Salsarita's to $3,321,000 at the top of Del Taco's Item 7 range. Qdoba is the closest fast-casual analogue to Chipotle by format and by check average, and it is the only one of the five publishing an Item 19 built from a sample above 400 franchised restaurants.
The 12/25 FDD estimates $548,100 to $1,294,000 for a traditional restaurant, including a $40,000 franchise fee, and $234,500 to $898,000 for a non-traditional one with a $20,000 fee. Both totals exclude real property and liquor licensing costs. The recurring stack on a traditional unit is a 5% royalty plus a 4.5% marketing fee, and honorably discharged veterans get $10,000 off the initial fee under the VetFran program.
Median net sales were $1,596,761 across 464 franchised restaurants open and franchisee-operated for at least one year through September 28, 2025. A separate table covering 397 traditional franchised restaurants that reported through Qdoba's portal shows average proforma franchisee EBITDA of $254,430, or 15.3% of sales, with a median of $246,001 and a low of negative $214,733. That negative low is the number worth sitting with.
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