Methodology
& Scope

The Operator Index tracks the experience of US multi-unit franchise operators across the major QSR franchisors. The initial universe is drawn from publicly disclosed Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs) on file with the registering states — principally Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, and Virginia — covering McDonald's, Domino's, Wingstop, the Yum brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC), Popeyes, Burger King, and the other major QSR systems.

The target respondent is a multi-unit principal — the natural person or controlled entity that signed the franchise agreement and is responsible for the capital deployment, hiring, and operating decisions across more than one location. Single-unit operators, store managers, and corporate-store leadership are excluded; the Index is oriented toward the layer of the system with skin in the game and a multi-period perspective on the franchisor relationship.

The interview instrument is held stable across quarters to enable longitudinal comparison. It comprises a brief qualifier establishing principal status and unit count, followed by an open-ended block of five questions covering the operator's substantive read of the franchisor relationship.

Qualifier

1. Q1.

   Principal & unit count

   Confirmation that the respondent is the principal or decision-maker for the franchised units, together with the number of units operated today and the franchisor brand(s) under which they operate.

Sentiment block

2. Q2.

   The friend test

   Whether the respondent would advise a friend asking today to buy into the franchisor as a new franchisee, and what they would warn the friend about.

3. Q3.

   Three-year trajectory

   The same friend-test question asked retrospectively for three years prior, and what has changed since.

4. Q4.

   Re-sign intent

   Whether the respondent would re-sign their franchise agreement today if it came up for renewal, and the reasoning behind the answer. The aggregated re-sign-intent distribution by franchisor is the load-bearing chart of every published issue.

5. Q5.

   Corporate-relationship strain

   The single most helpful and the single most harmful thing the franchisor is doing for operators today. Specificity is encouraged.

6. Q6.

   Peer signal

   Whether other multi-unit operators in the respondent's DMA appear to be reinvesting in their units or running them down for cash, based on the respondent's direct observation.

Each interview takes approximately ten minutes. No audio is recorded; interviewer notes are taken contemporaneously and coded against a stable thematic framework after the call.

Each issue draws its sample from the universe of US multi-unit franchise operators identified through publicly disclosed FDDs. Recruitment proceeds through a multi-channel sequence — written first-touch outreach, professional-network introductions, and telephone follow-up — with operator opt-in required before any interview is conducted.

Sample composition is reported in every published issue: total respondents, respondents by franchisor, respondents by unit-count band, respondents by US region, and the response-rate band underlying the figures. Cohorts smaller than the published minimum cell size are reported only as part of the aggregate; no franchisor-specific finding is published from a cohort below the minimum.

Quantitative items are aggregated into bands. No respondent's individual figures are ever published. Open-ended responses are coded into thematic categories; representative quotations are reproduced only with explicit consent from the respondent and are never attributed.

Each published issue includes the full data dictionary used for coding, the cell-size minimum applied for that issue, and the thematic framework in effect — so that every figure can be traced back to its underlying construction.

No individual operator is identified in any published issue, in any private benchmarking artefact provided to a participant, or in any subscriber communication. Operator identity is held strictly within the research team. Individual responses are not shared with any franchisor, supplier, investor, or third party in identifiable form, ever.

Aggregated findings are licensed to institutional research subscribers under terms that prohibit re-identification of respondents and prohibit redistribution to franchisors. Full privacy practices are described at operatorindex.com/privacy.

Issues are published quarterly. Vol. I, No. 1 is forthcoming in Q3 2026; thereafter, issues are scheduled at the end of each calendar quarter. Each issue reports against the same instrument, the same sample-construction framework, and the same aggregation rules as every prior issue, so that comparisons across quarters are well-defined.

Where the methodology changes, the change is documented in the revision history below, the full prior version remains available, and figures from the affected period are tagged in the issue text.