No, The Cheesecake Factory does not franchise in the US. Every US restaurant is company-operated and international growth runs on exclusive licenses.
Quick answer No. The Cheesecake Factory does not franchise in the United States, where every restaurant is company-operated. The public company (NASDAQ: CAKE) expands abroad through exclusive license agreements instead, including one with Maxim's Caterers covering Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and mainland China that has been expanded to a minimum of 18 restaurants by 2028.
Maxim’s Caterers can open a Cheesecake Factory in Shanghai. You cannot open one in Dallas. Both statements are true at the same time, and the distance between them is the entire answer to the question.
The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated is a public company, listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker CAKE, and its US restaurants are company-operated. No franchise program exists for American buyers, no franchise fee has ever been published, and no Franchise Disclosure Document sits on file with any state regulator, because a company that sells no franchises has nothing to disclose.
Growth outside the United States runs on a different contract. The company has held an exclusive licensing agreement with Maxim’s Caterers since 2014 covering Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and mainland China. That agreement has since been expanded to a minimum of 18 restaurants by 2028, with six operating at the time of the announcement. Other licensees run restaurants elsewhere in Asia and across the Middle East. None of those arrangements is a franchise, and none is available to an individual.
| Company-operated | International license | Franchise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the restaurant | The Cheesecake Factory | The licensee company | An independent buyer |
| Who employs the staff | The company | The licensee | The franchisee |
| Governing document | Internal policy | A negotiated commercial license | FDD plus franchise agreement |
| Covered by the FTC Franchise Rule | No | No | Yes |
| Open to an individual | No | No | Yes |
| Published unit economics | Company-level financials only | None | Item 19, when the brand files one |
| Asset at exit | None | A contract that ends | A transferable business |
The row that settles this question is the regulatory one. Selling a franchise in the United States triggers the FTC Franchise Rule, which forces the seller to hand a prospective buyer a Franchise Disclosure Document at least 14 days before any signature or payment. That document has to itemize the fees in Items 5 and 6, the full investment range in Item 7, the litigation and bankruptcy history, the unit counts and closures in Item 20, and any sales figure the brand chooses to publish in Item 19.
A license agreement between two corporations carries none of that. Terms are negotiated privately, no state registration follows, and nothing reaches the public record. The brand you cannot buy is also the brand that would never have to show you a number.
Start with the menu. A restaurant running roughly 250 items needs a kitchen with many stations, deep daily prep, and a training program measured in weeks. Franchising travels best where the operating manual is short enough that an owner can learn the whole system and then teach it to a new hire on a Tuesday afternoon.
Then there is the box. These are large-format restaurants in high-traffic retail centers, and the sites get negotiated by a corporate real estate team with a national landlord relationship behind it. A single franchisee brings capital to that conversation and not much else.
Underneath both sits arithmetic. A franchised restaurant sends the franchisor a royalty of perhaps 5 or 6 percent of sales. A company-operated restaurant sends the corporation the whole top line, minus the cost of running it. Franchising is a way to fund expansion with other people’s money, and a public company with access to capital markets is choosing between those two options rather than being forced into one.
Applebee’s sits in the same segment: full service, big menu, a bar, a suburban pad site. It does franchise, and its 2026 FDD shows both what that costs and which way the model is drifting.
The initial franchise fee is $35,000 per restaurant. Item 7 puts the total investment at $616,682 to $5,822,933, a spread wide enough to cover a dual-branded conversion at one end and a ground-up Tower II build at the other. Item 19 reports gross sales for 1,351 traditional franchised restaurants over the fiscal year ended December 28, 2025.
| Applebee’s Item 19, fiscal 2025 | Restaurants | Average | Median | High | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Midwest | 403 | $2,662,918 | $2,545,951 | $5,011,435 | $1,053,693 |
| Northeast | 279 | $3,830,089 | $3,609,473 | $10,150,710 | $1,994,980 |
| South | 419 | $2,450,367 | $2,361,192 | $5,036,244 | $1,086,609 |
| West | 250 | $3,292,418 | $3,224,283 | $5,754,375 | $1,733,894 |
| Total | 1,351 | $2,954,522 | $2,822,904 | $10,150,710 | $1,053,693 |
Now read Item 20 beside it. Traditional franchised restaurants went from 1,575 at the start of 2023 to 1,416 at the end of 2025. Company-owned traditional restaurants went from zero to 59 over the same window. The franchisor has been absorbing restaurants rather than selling more of them. A casual dining brand that franchises at scale and one that has never franchised at all are currently moving capital in the same direction, which is worth sitting with before you decide the Cheesecake Factory answer is unusual.
See which food franchises publish real sales figures. We read the filed FDD itself, Items 5, 7, and 19, instead of the franchisor’s opportunity page.
Most people asking this question want either the full-service format or the dessert half of it. The dessert half is where the filed documents are.
| Crumbl | Cinnabon | |
|---|---|---|
| Franchisor | Crumbl Franchising, LLC | Cinnabon Franchisor SPV LLC |
| FDD year | 2026 | 2026 |
| Initial franchise fee | $50,000 | $35,500 for a full bakery |
| Investment range | $848,566 to $1,472,533 | $256,950 to $703,500 traditional, $196,250 to $715,100 non-traditional |
| Royalty | 8% of gross sales plus a 2% marketing fund | 6% of net sales |
| Item 19 sample | 776 franchised locations open all of 2025 | 189 enclosed mall franchises, fiscal 2025 |
| Item 19 median | $1,093,071 gross sales | $600,536 net sales |
| Item 19 low | $365,129 | $186,211 |
| Item 19 high | $3,421,762 | $2,216,582 |
Read the sample row before the median row, the same way you would with any disclosure. Crumbl counted 1,101 franchised locations at the end of 2025 and reported on 776 of them, excluding 325 that either had not operated the full year or did not submit complete financials on time. Roughly a quarter of the system is invisible in that median. The company also notes that 346 of the 776, about 45%, met or exceeded the $1,139,162 average, which tells you the distribution leans on a long right tail.
The low numbers deserve more attention than the medians. Crumbl’s weakest reported store did $365,129 in gross sales against a build that can reach $1,472,533. Cinnabon’s bottom quartile of mall bakeries averaged $343,695 in net sales with a floor of $186,211. Both figures describe real franchisees who signed the same agreement as everyone else. Our Crumbl cost breakdown works through the Item 7 line items, and the longer piece on whether Crumbl is a franchise covers the qualification side. For the colder end of the dessert category, the ice cream and frozen yogurt rankings compare disclosure quality across those brands.
Very little of the traffic on this query is about corporate structure. It comes from someone who has watched a Cheesecake Factory parking lot fill on a Saturday night and assumed there was a way to buy into it. There is not, and there never has been in the United States.
The consolation is a smaller name attached to a document you can read before you sign. An Item 7 ceiling tells you the worst case on the build. An Item 19 low store tells you what a bad year looks like for somebody who already did it. Neither number exists for a brand that does not franchise, which is the part most people skip when they decide the recognizable logo would have been the better deal.
Browse food franchises with filed FDDs. Every brand we cover is analyzed from the document itself, including the Item 7 investment range and whatever the franchisor was willing to put in Item 19.
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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. The Cheesecake Factory does not franchise in the United States, and every US restaurant is operated by the company itself. Because nothing is offered for sale, there is no Franchise Disclosure Document, no initial franchise fee, and no Item 7 investment range to evaluate. Figures circulating online under headings like Cheesecake Factory franchise cost are not drawn from any filing, because no filing exists.
Through exclusive licensing agreements with established restaurant operators rather than through franchising. Maxim's Caterers has held the license for Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and mainland China since 2014, and that agreement has been expanded to a minimum of 18 restaurants by 2028, with six operating at the time of the announcement. Additional licensees run restaurants elsewhere in Asia and in the Middle East. Each of those deals is a negotiated corporate contract, available to companies with existing restaurant infrastructure.
A franchise sale is regulated and a license is not. Selling a franchise in the United States triggers the FTC Franchise Rule, which requires the franchisor to deliver a Franchise Disclosure Document at least 14 days before the buyer signs or pays anything, covering fees, the investment range, litigation history, unit counts, and any sales claim the brand makes. A license agreement between two corporations carries no such requirement, no state registration, and no public record of its terms.
Applebee's is the largest example still selling franchises in full-service casual dining. Its 2026 FDD lists a $35,000 initial franchise fee and an Item 7 range of $616,682 to $5,822,933, and Item 19 reports a $2,822,904 median gross sales figure across 1,351 traditional franchised restaurants for the fiscal year ended December 28, 2025, with a $1,053,693 low. Read that next to Item 20, where franchised units have been falling while company-owned units grow.
Crumbl and Cinnabon both file FDDs with Item 19 sales data. Crumbl's 2026 document puts a store at $848,566 to $1,472,533 with a $50,000 franchise fee and an 8% royalty, and reports a $1,093,071 median across 776 locations that operated all of 2025, with a $365,129 low store. Cinnabon charges $35,500 for a full bakery against $256,950 to $703,500 in a traditional location, and its 189 enclosed mall franchises averaged $665,401 in net sales for fiscal 2025 against a $600,536 median.
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