Pita Pit franchise cost: $353,154 to $685,075 per the 2025 FDD, a $20,000 fee, 6% royalty and 2% ad fund. Item 19 quartiles and a system down to 56 units.
Quick answer A Pita Pit restaurant costs $353,154 to $685,075 to open per Item 7 of the 2025 FDD, including a $20,000 franchise fee. The royalty is 6% of net sales, plus a 2% advertising fund (up to 3%) and 1% local advertising. Item 19's 56 franchised restaurants averaged $193,622 to $638,598 by quartile in 2024.
The 2025 Pita Pit Franchising, LLC disclosure, issued May 7, 2025, prices one restaurant at $353,154 to $685,075. The franchise fee is $20,000. The royalty is 6% of net sales, with a 2% advertising fund on top that the franchisor can raise to 3%.
Those numbers are ordinary for a sandwich concept. The rest of the document is not. Item 20 shows 115 franchised restaurants at the start of 2022 and 56 at the end of 2024. Over those three years 62 franchised restaurants left the system and 3 opened. In 2024, none opened.
Item 19 is unusually complete for a brand that size: every one of the 56 surviving franchised restaurants is in it, sorted into quartiles. That makes Pita Pit a useful case study in what a full disclosure looks like when the system behind it is shrinking. This guide walks through every Item that bears on cost, with page references to the 2025 FDD.
| Item 7 line | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Franchise fee | $20,000 | $20,000 |
| Initial rent and security deposit | $2,400 | $10,000 |
| Opening cash | $800 | $1,500 |
| Leasehold improvements | $190,011 | $400,000 |
| Business license | $200 | $1,000 |
| Insurance (monthly premium) | $275 | $750 |
| Store launch and local marketing package | $3,300 | $4,830 |
| Legal, accounting and software | $500 | $3,000 |
| Furniture, fixtures and equipment package | $97,795 | $185,475 |
| Staff and management training | $1,000 | $7,000 |
| Uniforms and new store kit | $1,243 | $1,800 |
| Initial inventory | $5,300 | $10,200 |
| Additional funds, 3 months | $25,650 | $37,800 |
| Laptop computer | $500 | $1,000 |
| Laptop software, monthly | $5 | $70 |
| Online ordering, gift card and loyalty | $495 | $650 |
| Local advertising | 1% of net sales | 1% of net sales |
| Total | $353,154 | $685,075 |
Two lines carry the range. Leasehold improvements ($190,011 to $400,000) and the fixture package ($97,795 to $185,475) add up to $287,806 at the low end and $585,475 at the high end, between 81% and 85% of the total. Everything else in the table is small.
Note 1 puts the footprint at roughly 1,000 to 1,400 square feet. Note 2 says the leasehold estimate may include a drive-thru if you add one, and Item 1 makes the case for drive-thru lanes directly, saying restaurants with them held up better through COVID and that the trend has continued. If your plan includes a drive-thru, assume you are at the top of the leasehold line or past it.
The fixture package (Note 7) covers the walk-in cooler and freezer, the pita counters, the exhaust hood with fire suppression, the griddle, the refrigerated sandwich station, smoothie blenders, the POS system, a kitchen display system for drive-thru stores, artwork, signage and digital menu boards. Item 8 requires these to come from designated or approved suppliers.
Read the exclusions too. Note 11 says the $25,650 to $37,800 in additional funds covers payroll, supplies, utilities and maintenance for three months, but not the royalty, not the ad fund, not food and beverage cost, and not your salary. Note 15 adds that the total excludes sales tax on equipment and the 1% local advertising spend. A buyer who budgets the Item 7 high end and nothing more is underfunded on day one. Our Item 7 walkthrough covers what these tables typically leave out, and the working-capital guide covers how much cushion to hold.
Item 11 says franchisees typically open 60 to 180 days after taking possession of the leased space. That clock starts at possession, not at signing.
The single-unit franchise fee is $20,000, and the way it is collected matters. Item 5 requires you to pay the full $20,000 as a deposit before you sign the Franchise Agreement, under a Deposit Agreement in Exhibit F-1. If the franchisor does not approve you, or you withdraw, the deposit comes back minus a $5,000 processing fee, and the franchisor can deduct more if its expenses for travel, site review and lease work ran higher.
After signing, the fee is earned. The one refund path is narrow: if the franchisor terminates because no suitable lease was signed within one year, you get the fee back minus processing costs. Past two years with no lease, there is no refund at all.
Pita Pit participates in VetFran and gives qualified veterans 20% off the fee for their first restaurant, which takes it to $16,000.
Development deals start at three restaurants:
| Restaurants | Per restaurant | Development fee |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | $15,000 | $45,000 |
| 4 | $12,500 | $50,000 |
| 5 | $10,000 | $50,000 |
| 6 or more | Negotiated | Negotiated |
The development fee is a bulk prepayment of the franchise fees for every restaurant in the schedule, nonrefundable once signed. Restaurants opened under a development agreement are excluded from the veteran discount and any other incentive.
The recurring cost of a Pita Pit is three percentages of net sales:
That is 9% of sales at today’s ad fund rate and 10% if it moves to the cap. At the 2024 median of roughly $376,500 in gross sales, 9% comes to about $33,900 a year. At the bottom-quartile average of $193,622 it is about $17,400.
Note 1 contains a clause worth reading twice. If any law stops the franchisor from keeping supplier rebates, it can raise your royalty by up to 1.5 percentage points. That matters because rebates are a large share of how this franchisor earns money. Item 8 reports $376,929 in supplier rebates in 2024, 23% of the franchisor’s total revenue of $1,645,190, including up to 0.875% of the net price of everything you buy through the designated food distributor. A separate affiliate, Pita Bread Movers, LLC, sells pita bread to Sysco and reported $775,294 in revenue from those sales.
The ad fund itself has a history. Note 2 says the original fund was set up in 2007, was foreclosed on March 7, 2023, and now sits in Pita Pit Advertising, LLC, an affiliate owned by the same parent.
Other Item 6 fees to price in:
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Transfer (single unit) | $7,000 plus the franchisor’s costs |
| Transfer (development rights) | $25,000 plus costs |
| Renewal | $20,000, all but $2,500 creditable toward required upgrades |
| Additional training | Up to $5,000 per person plus travel |
| Late payments | Prime plus 5% |
| Liquidated damages | Projected royalties for the lesser of the remaining term or 2 years |
The renewal structure deserves a note. Note 7 lets you apply $17,500 of the $20,000 renewal fee to the capital work the franchisor requires at renewal. If the required work costs more, you pay the difference.
The term is short and tied to your lease. Item 17 sets it at the earlier of ten years or the end of your lease, with one renewal on the same basis. The territory is small: Item 12 grants a half-mile radius, and the franchisor keeps the right to put a restaurant in any “Institution” inside it, a list that includes universities, hospitals, airports, military bases and sports complexes.
Item 19 is the strongest part of this FDD. It covers all 56 franchised restaurants that were open on December 31, 2024, and all 56 operated the full calendar year. There is no “top performers” filter and no reporting-unit subset. Gross sales are net of sales tax, discounts and returns, drawn from the point-of-sale systems and checked against third-party delivery reports.
| Quartile (14 restaurants each) | Average | Median | High | Low | Avg / median months open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | $638,598 | $645,488 | $856,268 | $490,495 | 181 / 201 |
| Second | $426,905 | $432,003 | $476,778 | $376,732 | 147 / 138 |
| Third | $327,332 | $328,530 | $376,265 | $277,774 | 154 / 150 |
| Fourth | $193,622 | $194,310 | $256,338 | $142,572 | 142 / 122 |
Item 19 does not print a single system median, but the quartile boundaries give it to you. The 28th and 29th restaurants sit at $376,732 and $376,265, so the median Pita Pit did about $376,500 in 2024. The four quartile averages work out to a system average of about $396,600. Both of those are our arithmetic from the table, not figures the FDD states.
Three things limit how far you can lean on this table.
These are old restaurants. The months-in-operation column is not a typo. The top quartile averaged 181 months open, about 15 years, and even the bottom quartile averaged 142 months. Nothing in the sample is new. With 3 franchised openings in three years, the FDD has no data on what a newly built Pita Pit does in its first or second year.
The closed stores are excluded. Item 19 states that the 18 franchised restaurants that permanently closed in 2024 are left out because they lacked a full year of sales. Survivors are the restaurants that did well enough to stay open. Our piece on average versus median and survivorship bias explains why this pushes every figure up.
Sales are not profit. Item 19 discloses no food cost, labor, rent or owner earnings.
Here is what the 9% fee load (6% royalty, 2% ad fund, 1% local advertising) looks like at each quartile’s average, our arithmetic on the disclosed rates:
| Quartile average | Annual sales | 9% of sales |
|---|---|---|
| First | $638,598 | $57,474 |
| Second | $426,905 | $38,421 |
| Third | $327,332 | $29,460 |
| Fourth | $193,622 | $17,426 |
The fee falls with sales, but rent, a manager and debt service on a $353,154-plus build do not. That is why the bottom half of this table matters more than the top.
Put the sales next to Item 7 and the challenge is plain. A restaurant built at the $353,154 low end of Item 7 has to sell about what the median restaurant sells in a year just to match its build cost in revenue. A quarter of the system sells under $277,774. At those volumes, 9% in fees, food, labor and a lease leave little room for debt service. See the full Pita Pit financials facet for how these figures sit in our database, and Item 19 explained for the general rules.
| Year | Start | Opened | Terminated | Non-renewed | Ceased, other | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 115 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 13 | 98 |
| 2023 | 98 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 22 | 74 |
| 2024 | 74 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 14 | 56 |
Company-owned restaurants went from 3 to 2 in 2024 when the Liberty Lake, Washington store closed. Total outlets fell from 118 at the start of 2022 to 58 at the end of 2024.
Most exits were “ceased operations for other reasons”: 49 of the 62. Terminations ran a steady 3 a year. Read in percentages, 18 exits in 2024 against 74 franchised restaurants that January is about 24% of the system in one year, and 25 exits in 2023 against 98 is about 26%.
The losses spread across the map. Alabama, Arizona, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wyoming all went from at least one franchised Pita Pit in 2022 to none by the end of 2024. Florida went from 6 to 1. Washington, the biggest state, went from 15 to 10.
Transfers were 9 in 2024, spread across Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Utah, Washington and West Virginia.
Item 20 projects 7 new franchised openings in the next fiscal year, in Alaska, Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Utah. The same table shows zero franchise agreements signed but not yet opened. Those projected openings had no signed agreements behind them on December 31, 2024.
Item 20 also says that in some instances current and former franchisees have signed provisions restricting what they can say about Pita Pit, though typically only about settlement terms. Exhibit I lists everyone who left in 2024. Call them anyway.
The corporate history explains part of the decline. Item 1 says the original shareholders sold control in December 2018 to a buyer financed by promissory notes. COVID hit about a year later, the buyer defaulted, and on March 7, 2023 the original group took the assets back through strict foreclosure, forming Pita Pit USA 4.0, Inc. and the current franchisor. Item 3 discloses no litigation and Item 4 no bankruptcy.
| Brand | Item 7 range | Fee | Royalty | Units on file | Item 19 median on file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pita Pit | $353,154 to $685,075 | $20,000 | 6% | 56 | about $376,500 (derived) |
| Quiznos | $213,900 to $648,800 | $5,000 | 5% | 138 | $348,962 |
| Deli Delicious | $122,800 to $251,500 | $30,000 | 6% | 42 | $550,851 |
| Mr. Goodcents | $311,139 to $505,910 | $30,000 | 6% | 62 | $798,955 |
| Jimmy John’s | $366,200 to $728,200 | $35,000 | 6% | 2,737 | $955,639 |
| Firehouse Subs | $405,350 to $1,577,750 | $20,000 | 6% | 1,249 | $986,432 |
Figures for the other brands come from each brand’s most recent FDD in our database. Sample definitions differ, so treat the comparison as directional.
Pita Pit’s fee is among the lowest in the category and its royalty is standard. Its build cost lands in the same band as Jimmy John’s. The gap is in the sales line. Jimmy John’s and Firehouse Subs both report medians near $1 million on comparable entry costs, and Mr. Goodcents, a regional brand with a similar unit count, reports more than double Pita Pit’s median on a lower build cost. Of the brands in the table, only Quiznos posts a lower median.
The sandwiches and subs category page lists every brand we track, and our best sandwich franchises ranking compares 23 of them on Item 7, Item 19 and closure rates. The broader food and beverage index covers the rest of the restaurant field.
The FDD answers the cost question well. It leaves the business question open. Bring these to discovery day:
Then do the work yourself. Call ten operators from Exhibit I, including several from the 2024 exit list, and build a P&L at the third-quartile average of $327,332 rather than the top. If the deal only works in the first quartile, it does not work.
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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.
Item 7 of the 2025 Pita Pit FDD estimates $353,154 to $685,075 to open one restaurant. The largest lines are leasehold improvements at $190,011 to $400,000 and the furniture, fixtures and equipment package at $97,795 to $185,475. The total includes the $20,000 franchise fee and three months of additional funds ($25,650 to $37,800), but excludes your salary, sales tax on equipment, and the 1% local advertising requirement.
The single-unit franchise fee is $20,000, paid in full as a deposit before you sign the Franchise Agreement (Item 5). Qualified veterans get 20% off the fee for their first restaurant. If you are not approved or you withdraw, the deposit comes back minus a $5,000 processing fee and any larger expenses the franchisor incurred.
The Continuing Fee is 6% of net sales, due on the 5th of each month (Item 6). The General Advertising Fund adds 2% of net sales and can go up to 3%, and Item 7 Note 12 requires you to spend another 1% of net sales on local advertising. Note 1 also lets the franchisor raise the royalty by up to 1.5% if a law ever bars it from keeping supplier rebates.
Item 19 of the 2025 FDD reports 2024 gross sales for all 56 franchised restaurants open the full year. The top quartile averaged $638,598, the second $426,905, the third $327,332 and the bottom $193,622. The best restaurant did $856,268 and the weakest $142,572. These are sales figures only; the FDD discloses no costs or profit.
At the end of 2024 there were 56 franchised and 2 company-owned Pita Pit restaurants in the United States, 58 in total, per Item 20 of the 2025 FDD. That is down from 118 at the start of 2022. The franchisor projects 7 new franchised openings in the following year, with no signed-but-unopened agreements on the books.
Pita Pit Franchising, LLC, an Idaho company, is wholly owned by Pita Pit USA 4.0, Inc. Item 1 explains that the original shareholders sold control in December 2018, the buyers defaulted on the seller financing, and the original group took the assets back by strict foreclosure on March 7, 2023. Peter Riggs is CEO of the parent and Jack Riggs its treasurer.
The 2025 FDD gives you a clean sales disclosure and a low franchise fee, but also a system that lost more than half its franchised units in three years and opened none in 2024. A buyer at the low end of Item 7 is investing about the same amount as the median restaurant sells in a year. Call the former franchisees listed in Exhibit I before you sign.
This page is part of VetMyFranchise. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt