Footprint and labor questions

Square footage alone does not tell you how the shop runs. A buyer needs the premises type, customer area, production line, storage, utilities, order channels and local rent convention before a size range becomes an occupancy budget.

Start with Item 7’s footnotes. Confirm whether the area is rentable or usable, whether it describes a kiosk, inline unit, end cap, conversion or freestanding restaurant, and whether the range includes seating. Obtain a real landlord proposal and identify base rent, percentage rent, common-area charges, taxes, insurance, utilities and required operating hours. Never multiply a filing’s square feet by a remembered market rent and call the result a budget.

The examples here span several models. Döner Haus’s 2026 filing describes an 850–1,200-square-foot standing-service imbiss. The 2024 GDK filing used here describes a typical 1,200–1,400-square-foot outlet inside a five-outlet minimum. Shah’s Halal describes 1,200–2,000 square feet. Mad for Chicken’s 2024 full-restaurant format uses 2,000–4,000 square feet and separately discloses an express format. 375° Chicken ‘n Fries uses 800–1,500 square feet. Similar counter-service language can therefore sit on very different real-estate and production assumptions.

Convert a menu into stations

Ask:

• Which stations must be staffed at opening, peak and close?
• Which prep happens before service, and which items are cooked or assembled to order?
• Do counter, kiosk, drive-through and delivery orders enter one queue?
• Who receives inventory, washes equipment, cleans customer space and covers breaks?
• Which roles require a manager or certified food-protection employee?
• Does the Item 7 rent allowance resemble current proposals for the target market and format?

Turn answers into a daypart schedule, including opening prep, overlap, breaks and closing work. Sales per labor hour can be a useful internal ratio only when both terms are defined: which sales, which paid hours, which employees, which period and which stores. A marketing benchmark with no sample or definitions cannot establish staffing for a new outlet. If a franchisor makes a financial performance claim about labor productivity during the sales process, compare it with Item 19 and its substantiation.

Compare like with like

Use the current GDK filing page, the 2025 Shah’s Halal document and operator format pages as current public documents, dated. Wendy’s preferred-site criteria, for example, distinguishes freestanding requirements and lists nontraditional location types. It is useful because it states the format context explicitly, not because its dimensions transfer to another system.

For each candidate site, make one sheet with the offered format, Item 7 area, actual area, seats, channels, operating hours, proposed occupancy charges and a role-by-daypart schedule. Ask several franchisees operating the same format how the opening schedule differed from the stabilized schedule. The result should expose assumptions rather than compress them into a claim that a smaller box always means less labor or a larger box always means better throughput.

Labor cash in the Item 7 window

Additional funds are the filing’s estimate of payroll and occupancy cash during ramp. They do not staff the shop.

Brand	Sq ft as filed	Additional funds	Months	Source
Döner Haus	850–1,200	$20,000–$35,000	3	2026 Franchise Disclosure Document
GDK	1,200–1,400	$15,000–$20,000	3	FDD issued 3 September 2024
Shah’s Halal Food	1,200–2,000	$10,000–$30,000	3	FDD issued 10 April 2024
375° Chicken ‘n Fries	800–1,500	$30,000–$60,000	3	FDD issued 30 April 2024
The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill	1,800–2,000	$35,000–$75,000	0–6	FDD issued 17 August 2023
Mad for Chicken	2,000–4,000	$51,375–$162,000	3	FDD issued 12 March 2025

A 2,000–4,000 square-foot Korean fried-chicken dining room (Mad for Chicken) and an 850–1,200 square-foot standing imbiss (Döner Haus) need different headcounts. Training hours hint at complexity — Wienerschnitzel 48 classroom + 480 OTJ; Great Greek 60.25 + 180; bluTaco 0 + 11.5 — but hours do not produce a roster. Build the roster from stations:

• spit or grill;
• assembly / expo;
• cashier or kiosk runner;
• fryer, if the menu needs one;
• dish / smallwares;
• a manager who can close.

If delivery and counter hit the same expo, that is one more body or a longer ticket time. Item 16 (menu) and Item 8 (required equipment) decide whether a station exists. The exploded kitchen drawing on this page does not.

Peak is a design load

Item 7 and square-footage ranges are silent on covers per hour. Ask for the prototype’s station map and a peak labor chart from operators, not from marketing. A 1,200–1,400 square-foot GDK box (FDD issued 3 September 2024) with a spit, a grill and an expo is a different peak than Shah’s 1,200–2,000 chicken-and-rice line (FDD issued 10 April 2024) or Pepper Lunch’s teppan service (16 classroom + 192 OTJ in the May 2024 comparative record). Teppan puts cooking in the dining room; labor stands where customers sit. An imbiss puts cooking behind a counter; labor stands where tickets print.

Minimum wage is not in these FDDs as a national figure, so leave it off any cross-brand table. Local wage, scheduling laws and overtime rules belong on the buyer’s labor sheet beside the roster. Additional funds of $15,000–$20,000 for three months (GDK) cannot absorb a four-person peak in a high-wage city if sales are slow. That is a sensitivity, labeled as the buyer’s, not a correction to Item 7.

375°’s 800–1,500 square feet with $30,000–$60,000 additional funds (FDD issued 30 April 2024) is a smaller box with a thicker cash row than GDK’s. Read both. Neither row tells you how many people to schedule. Crave’s 15 classroom + 37 OTJ (May 2024 comparative study) is a short program for whatever box that filing assumes — square footage is not on this site, so do not guess it from the hours.

The sales-per-labor-hour chart used on the Item 19 page is the anti-pattern: a productivity claim with no sample. If a franchisor quotes a labor ratio in the sales process, it belongs in Item 19 or it belongs in the “unverified claim” log.

Great Greek’s 1,800–2,000 square feet and $35,000–$75,000 additional funds over up to six months (FDD issued 17 August 2023) is the seated-dining end here: more floor to clean, more hours in the training table, more cash in the ramp row. Döner Haus’s 850–1,200 standing imbiss is the other end. Do not put both on a single “Mediterranean QSR” labor benchmark. Capriotti’s and Wienerschnitzel have no square-footage field here; do not staff them from a neighbor’s range.

Related reading

• QSR vs fast casual — labels versus the path
• What it costs to open — construction and additional funds
• Training — hours that have to produce the roster
• Item 8, suppliers — equipment you must buy
• Item 19 — labor-productivity charts that are not FPRs