🎯 The business: a convenience store where the franchisor owns or leases the building, buys the equipment and stocks the opening inventory. You bring a smaller amount of cash than most franchises require, run the store around the clock, and split the gross profit with the company. Lower entry, less upside per store.

Neighborhood walk-ins and drivers, all day and all night, buying drinks, snacks, cigarettes, lottery, coffee and increasingly fresh food. Per-store sales vary enormously by location; many sit around $1 million to $2 million a year in merchandise, with the fuel (where present) handled separately under the company’s terms.

Read the FDD, especially the gross profit split, the charges for the building, utilities and maintenance, and who decides the product mix. Talk to a dozen current franchisees. Look at stores actually available in your region; the best ones rarely come up. Understand that this is closer to a managed operating agreement than to owning a store, and decide if that trade suits you.

A store with $1.5 million in merchandise sales at a 35 percent gross margin produces about $525,000 of gross profit. After the franchisor’s share, you pay labor, some utilities and supplies out of yours. Owner income on a solid store commonly lands in the $60,000 to $150,000 range, higher with a second store. The labor line decides it, because the store never closes.

The FDD and agreement with a franchise attorney, the company’s approval process and training, tobacco and lottery licensing, alcohol licensing where sold, food safety for fresh items, and the labor laws of a 24-hour operation. The agreement sets what you may and may not change in the store.

Overnight staffing and theft. Expenses you did not model because the company deducts them. A product mix you do not control in a neighborhood that wants something else. Owners who do well live in the store the first year, hire carefully, and read every settlement statement line by line.