Petco does not franchise its roughly 1,394 US stores. CVC and CPP control the company. Pet Supplies Plus franchises: $540,520 to $1,975,005 per the 2025 FDD.
Quick answer No. Petco does not franchise. All of its roughly 1,394 US store locations are corporate, and the company trades publicly as WOOF while CVC Capital Partners and CPP Investment Board each hold about 50%. The franchised version of big-box pet retail is Pet Supplies Plus, with 502 franchised stores and a $2,496,071 median in its 2025 Item 19.
The PetSmart answer and the Petco answer are the same word, and that word is no. Neither big-box pet chain sells a retail franchise in the United States. Petco Health and Wellness Company ran roughly 1,394 US store locations as of August 2026, up from about 1,357 in an April 2026 count, and roughly 1,559 counting Mexico and Puerto Rico. Every US location is corporate.
PetSmart and Petco do split on one point. PetSmart franchises exactly one thing, a veterinary hospital operating inside its stores, which we covered in a separate post. Petco has no equivalent offering. There is no Petco franchise disclosure document filed anywhere, which means there is no fee, no Item 7 range, and no Item 19 to argue about.
The ownership answer is odd enough to be worth stating plainly. Petco trades on public markets under the ticker WOOF, so anyone can buy shares. Control is a different question: CVC Capital Partners and CPP Investment Board each hold about 50%, a pairing that goes back to the 2016 take-private and stayed intact through the return to the public market.
That structure matters to a would-be franchisee for one reason. Sponsor-controlled retail is built to be sold whole, at a multiple applied to the whole system’s earnings. Franchising does the opposite. It converts store-level profit into a royalty stream and hands the operating margin, the hiring, and the local pricing to several hundred independent owners. A sponsor that spent years assembling a chain does not usually spend the next few years distributing it.
There is a second reason, and it sits in the arithmetic of the store rather than the cap table.
A franchisor collects a royalty on gross sales, not on profit. That works when gross margin is high enough to absorb it. Big-box pet retail is mostly consumables, and dog food carries closer to grocery economics than restaurant economics. The clearest evidence comes from a franchisor that does operate in this category: Pet Supplies Plus reported an average annual gross margin of 38.0% across its reporting franchised stores, and it charges a royalty of 2.0% to 3.0%. Compare that to the 6% to 7% royalty typical of a service franchise. The retail model cannot carry a service-franchise royalty, and a franchisor that cannot charge one has a weaker reason to franchise at all.
Petco’s own answer to that math was to add higher-margin services inside the store: grooming, training, and veterinary care. Those services only work as a system-wide offer if one operator sets the pricing, the protocols, and the staffing. Handing 1,394 of them to independent buyers would unpick the part that improves the margin.
PSP Franchising, LLC has offered franchises under the Pet Supplies Plus mark since September 2010. Its 2025 FDD counts 502 franchised stores and 233 company or affiliate stores at the end of 2024, 735 outlets in total, which makes it the closest thing to a buyable Petco that exists.
The entry cost is $49,900, and there is a real waiver: convert an approved existing retail pet store and order all required signage at signing, and the fee goes away entirely. Total investment runs $540,520 to $1,975,005. Almost all of that spread lives in one line, leasehold improvements at $25,000 to $950,805, which is a way of saying your negotiation with the landlord decides your entry price more than the brand does. Inventory is another $170,000 to $290,000, and roughly 75% to 90% of it is bought from PSP Distribution, the franchisor’s own affiliate.
The Item 19 covers 347 franchised stores that were open before January 1, 2024 and ran the full measurement period under the same owner, from January 1 to December 28, 2024.
| Store age | Stores | Average annual gross sales | Median | Rent as % of sales | Labor as % of sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 37 | $1,693,451 | $1,688,265 | 10.4% | 19.2% |
| 2 years | 34 | $2,082,112 | $2,085,636 | 8.2% | 18.7% |
| 3 years | 33 | $2,366,665 | $2,321,758 | 7.4% | 16.5% |
| 4 or more years | 243 | $2,937,419 | $2,806,907 | 6.4% | 13.3% |
| All reporting stores | 347 | $2,666,693 | $2,496,071 | 6.9% | 14.4% |
Read the two right-hand columns before the two left ones. A four-year store does not earn its way to health by getting better at buying. Gross margin actually falls as stores age, from 40.5% in year one to 36.9% at four-plus years. What changes is that rent, a fixed number of about $183,091 a year on average, stops being 10.4% of sales and becomes 6.4% of sales, and labor drops from 19.2% to 13.3% over the same span. This model gets profitable by growing into a lease it signed on day one. That puts the whole underwriting question on your sales ramp, and it explains why the first-year cohort averages $1,693,451 against $2,937,419 for the mature group.
Then read the exclusions, because they all lean the same way. The 347 reporting stores exclude 19 that transferred during the year, 3 the franchisor reacquired, 8 that ceased operations, 3 that did not report fully, and 41 acquired from another system. Stores that closed or changed hands mid-year are precisely the ones a buyer wants in the sample. Individual store results ranged from $958,273 to $6,873,341, so the median is doing a lot of work.
The other franchised pet retailer in our database is Petland, Inc., and it sells something Pet Supplies Plus explicitly does not. PSP’s Item 1 describes selling small animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but not dogs or cats. Petland’s stores sell puppies and kittens, and its newer Dream Tails format leans further into that.
Petland’s 2026 FDD puts a store at $315,500 to $1,080,500 on a $50,000 franchise fee, with a royalty of 4.5% on your first and second stores dropping to 2.25% on the third and beyond. Its Item 19 reports on 65 franchised US stores open at least a year: a $2,816,216 median, a $2,879,482 average, and a range of $560,901 to $7,849,982. The 16 company-owned stores in the same document reported a $1,625,496 median, well below the franchised figure.
Strong per-store revenue sits next to a shrinking footprint. US outlets went from 99 at the start of 2023 to 86 at the end of 2025, with company-owned stores falling from 27 to 17 across the same three years. When revenue per store looks healthy and the store count keeps sliding, the constraint is not customer demand. Any buyer looking at this format should check the live-animal retail rules in the specific state and municipality before signing a territory, and should ask the franchisor directly what closed the units that closed.
We read Items 5, 7, and 19 out of the filed documents rather than repeating a franchise development page. Start with the boarding and daycare rankings if the retail numbers above look like more capital than you want to deploy.
Retail is the smaller half of the franchised pet category. Camp Bow Wow, owned by Propelled Brands, disclosed 225 franchised camps and one company-owned camp as of December 31, 2025. A camp costs $954,606 to $1,229,536 on a $50,000 initial fee, with a royalty of 3.5% in year one and then the greater of 7% of net revenue or a minimum monthly royalty for the rest of the term.
One line in that Item 7 deserves attention next to the Pet Supplies Plus ramp curve above: additional funds for the first three months of operations is $80,000. Three months of reserve on a build that can reach $1,229,536 is thin, and the PSP data is a useful warning about how long a facility-based unit takes to grow into its rent. The two brands are different businesses, but the ramp risk rhymes.
Our pet franchise industry analysis covers the rest of the category, including the mobile and grooming concepts that avoid the build-out problem entirely by not signing a lease.
The brand you searched for is not for sale, and no amount of digging will change that. What is for sale sits one aisle over. Pet Supplies Plus gives you a franchised store with a five-year operating history in its disclosure and a sales ramp you can model. Petland gives you higher median revenue on a format carrying regulatory questions the other two big-box chains chose not to carry. Camp Bow Wow gives you a services business with no retail inventory and a heavier royalty.
All three published numbers. Petco published none, which is the whole answer.
Pull the Camp Bow Wow FDD data sheet and compare it against the retail figures above. We work from the filed Items 5, 7, and 19, not from a brand’s recruiting deck.
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 →
Not ready to decide? Take the checklist with you.
Get the free Franchise Red-Flags Checklist: the things to verify in any FDD before you sign. We'll email it now, plus occasional buyer research from our team. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
✓ Check your inbox
The Franchise Red-Flags Checklist is on its way. While you wait, see a real $49 sample report →
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 petco a franchisepet franchise opportunitiespet supplies plus franchisepetland franchisecamp bow wowitem 19Pet Services 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. Petco sells no franchise of any kind, so there is no franchise disclosure document, no franchise development team, and no application to submit. Every US store is company operated. Search results quoting a Petco franchise cost are guessing at a number that has never existed, because a brand that does not franchise files nothing for anyone to quote.
Petco Health and Wellness Company trades publicly under the ticker WOOF, and two sponsors control it: CVC Capital Partners and CPP Investment Board, each holding roughly 50%. The pairing dates back to the 2016 take-private and survived the return to public markets. A listed ticker with two sponsors holding that much of the company behaves closer to a private business with a quote attached.
Roughly 1,394 US store locations as of August 2026, against about 1,357 in an April 2026 count, and about 1,559 including Mexico and Puerto Rico. All of the US locations are corporate. Store counts move as the company opens, closes, and relocates units, so treat any single figure as a snapshot rather than a fixed number.
Pet Supplies Plus and Petland are the two franchised pet retailers with disclosure documents in our database. Pet Supplies Plus runs a food and supplies store, costs $540,520 to $1,975,005 to open, and reported a $2,496,071 median across 347 franchised stores. Petland runs a live-animal store at $315,500 to $1,080,500 and reported a $2,816,216 median across 65 franchised US stores.
The 2025 FDD estimates $540,520 to $1,975,005, including a $49,900 initial franchise fee. Inventory alone runs $170,000 to $290,000, of which roughly 75% to 90% goes to the franchisor's own distribution affiliate. The wide range comes almost entirely from leasehold improvements at $25,000 to $950,805, which depends on how much of the build your landlord absorbs.
This page is part of VetMyFranchise. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt