Taco Bell (Traditional)

Franchise fee: $25,000 for standard locations, $45,000 for new development franchises.

Royalty: 5.5% of Gross Sales, paid each 'Period' (28-day accounting period, 13 periods per year). This is called the 'Period Franchise Fee' in Taco Bell's FDD. Add-on technology fees: $750/year per restaurant All Access Fee (POS), plus $0.19 per digital transaction (digital orders are a growing percentage of Taco Bell's volume).

Total investment: $934,750 to $4,310,200. This range covers end-cap conversions (lower end) to freestanding new construction with drive-through (higher end). Taco Bell's standard restaurant is drive-through focused — a freestanding pad site with dedicated lane is the typical format.

Taco Bell does not disclose average annual Gross Sales in its FDD — a significant omission for a brand at this scale. Instead, Item 19 provides three proprietary site forecasting tools:

Bell Point (Bain & Company model): projects sales and cash-on-cash return for a specific location with a +/-20% margin of error at 65% confidence. Kalibrate: traffic and demographic analysis tool. A third financial model is also referenced.

These tools are useful for site evaluation but don't give you a system-wide revenue benchmark. For context: industry analysts and Yum! Brands investor presentations have disclosed that average US Taco Bell unit volumes run approximately $1.8–2.0M annually — but this is not FDD-disclosed data. Verify current AUV (average unit volume) directly with the franchisor during your franchisee validation process.

Taco Bell grew from 7,681 to 7,847 units in 2024 — net growth of 166 units on a massive base, representing continued system health. At this scale, Taco Bell is one of the few QSR brands still actively growing its US footprint. Yum! Brands' quarterly earnings calls provide system AUV and same-store sales data that gives you real-time benchmarks the FDD doesn't provide.

Taco Bell's digital ordering and mobile app integration has been a significant driver of same-store sales growth — the digital transaction fee ($0.19/transaction) is a structural cost that grows as the brand's digital penetration increases. This means your per-transaction fee burden will likely increase over your franchise term as digital ordering expands.

The absence of Item 19 average revenue disclosure is unusual for a brand this size and well-documented in investor reporting. Taco Bell can disclose average unit volumes — Yum! Brands reports AUV publicly — but they choose not to include it in the FDD. This is a negotiating posture, not a data availability problem. It shifts the burden of revenue benchmarking entirely to your own research and franchisee interviews.

Taco Bell franchising is dominated by multi-unit operators who run 10–100+ locations. Single-unit buyers face a different operating model, economics, and support experience than operators who can spread corporate overhead across multiple stores. If you're evaluating a single Taco Bell location, you're likely looking at an existing unit acquisition from a multi-unit operator, not a new-market development deal.

The digital transaction fee ($0.19 per order) seems small but compounds at scale. At a location with 2,000 digital transactions/month (not unusual for a high-volume Taco Bell), you're paying $380/month ($4,560/year) in digital fees — above and beyond the 5.5% period franchise fee. As digital penetration grows from 20% to 40%+ of orders, this line item grows proportionally.