Everything below is against a franchisor's short term interest. It is here anyway, for a straightforward reason: a franchise system gains nothing from operators who joined without understanding what they joined. The shorter version sits on the franchising page.
Call the former franchisees
The disclosure document lists franchisees who left the system in the past year with contact details. Those calls are the highest value hours you will spend.
Ask what the franchisor did when the business had a bad quarter. Ask what support looked like in practice rather than on paper. Ask what they would need to see changed before they would join again. People who have left have no incentive to sell you anything and usually a strong incentive to be straight with you.
The success and failure rate claims, handled honestly
You will encounter statistics about how franchises perform against independent businesses. The most common is a claim that some very high percentage of franchises succeed, often attributed to the Small Business Administration. The mirror version, a dramatic failure rate, circulates just as widely.
Neither is verifiable, and this page will not repeat either. The SBA does not publish a franchise specific survival rate. What it does publish is general small business survival data through the Office of Advocacy's business survival research (opens in a new tab), which does not separate franchised from independent businesses and therefore cannot support a claim about franchising at all.
Treat any franchise performance statistic the same way. Ask for the primary source, open it, and check that it says what the person quoting it says it says. A figure that cannot survive that is not evidence, and a franchisor leaning on one is telling you something about the rest of its claims.
Read the agreement for the ending, not the beginning
The franchise agreement is attached to the disclosure document and it is the document that governs. Most people read it for what they get. Read it for how it ends.
- What the franchisor can require of you, and on what notice.
- What counts as a breach, and what cure period you get.
- What happens to the business if the agreement terminates.
- Whether you can sell, to whom, and on whose approval.
- What you are restricted from doing afterwards, and for how long.
Take it to people who work for you
A franchise attorney and an accountant, both independent of the franchisor, and both engaged by you. This is not a formality. The disclosure document exists to be examined, and the waiting period before you can sign anything exists so that examination can happen.