Compare franchise startup costs and store distribution on one screen

By bringing together public franchise data and real quotes, you can build a comparison service that helps prospective operators and advisers filter differences in brand density and costs before they sign a contract.

A way to automatically collect scattered franchise information has emerged

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (공정거래위원회), Korea's competition regulator, operates the Franchise Business Information Disclosure System, where people can look up each brand's startup terms. Prospective franchisees can check information such as the number of franchised and company-owned stores, average sales, standard store area, and interior construction costs.

Interior cost data can be pulled automatically through a public data access channel. This is a channel that lets other services retrieve data automatically. According to the Public Data Portal (공공데이터포털), entering a reference year and brand management number returns the brand name, standard store area, and interior cost per unit of area.

The channel is free, and its guidance says a development account can make up to 100,000 requests a day. That is enough for an early service comparing dozens of brands, but the limit and access terms should be checked again when applying for an operational account.

A separate FairData service can automatically collect franchised-store and company-owned-store counts, as well as average sales. The relevant FairData service requires five documents, including an application form and a pledge on security measures, along with approval from the Korea Fair Trade Commission. The approved period of use is 12 months. Rather than automating everything from the start, it is more realistic to build a test version by manually entering needed figures from the public lookup screen, then apply for approval.

The published interior amount is not an actual construction cost. It is closer to a comparison figure based on a particular standard area and reference year. In a joint survey by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, and Gyeonggi Province, 20.2% of responding franchisees said they paid more for interior work than the amount in the disclosure document. Their actual costs were 32% higher on average. Additional water and electrical work, and unclear calculation standards, were cited as major reasons.

The first customer is closer to an adviser than a prospective operator

Consider one person: a 52-year-old prospective operator, looking at a cafe franchise of about 20 pyeong after retirement, receives consultations from three brands and saves each disclosure document and quote. They copy numbers from portal screens, documents, and messages from franchise headquarters into paper notes or spreadsheets.

It is easy for this person to compare the total interior cost of a brand with a standard area of 15 pyeong against one with 25 pyeong without adjusting the figures. Demolition, heating and cooling, electrical capacity upgrades, signage, and kitchen equipment may each be included or excluded differently, so the person repeats the same questions at every consultation. They may also search maps one store at a time to find nearby locations of the same brand, then fail to distinguish company-owned stores from franchised ones.

With a comparison service, they would first enter their desired area, expected store size, and three brands of interest. The service would recalculate each standard area for the user's intended area and display a question list for work that may not be included in the published amount. It would also place the number of nearby stores and whether the brand operates company-owned stores on the same screen.

After receiving a quote from franchise headquarters, the user enters the amounts by item or transcribes the quote. Showing the gap between the published cost and the actual quote by demolition, electrical work, heating and cooling, and kitchen equipment gives the user concrete questions to ask headquarters instead of simply saying that a quote is expensive.

The results screen shows, side by side for each brand, estimated interior cost, separate costs, nearby store count, company-owned-store status, and the reference year of the information. Rather than recommending the cheapest brand, it is more trustworthy to flag brands with many potentially missing costs or data based on different reference years.

Some work remains manual. Exhaust routes, electrical capacity, fire-safety conditions, and the extent of demolition for existing facilities cannot be known without a site visit and measurement. Deposits, key money, rent, and expected sales also cannot be determined from this data alone. A cost gap should not by itself be used to judge whether anything is illegal.

The assumption for the first customers is 10 independent franchise advisers who repeatedly provide brand-comparison consultations to prospective operators. They can be found through startup consultation advertising on portals, follow-up consultations from local startup education programmes, and consultations at franchise expos. They currently create reports using spreadsheets and screen captures. Instead of charging one consumer a monthly fee, the first payment is more likely to come from advisers who can reuse a three-brand comparison report for multiple clients.

Elsewhere, public documents have become comparison products

The Australian government makes the Franchise Disclosure Register available free of charge. Franchisors register information and confirm it each year, while prospective franchisees can search for brands. However, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission states that inclusion in the register does not mean government verification or endorsement.

This case shows that government data is material for comparison, not a finished recommendation service. A private service can handle calculations adjusted for actual store conditions and identify missing items.

Vetted Biz in the United States collects standardised franchise disclosure documents and compares investment costs, store closures, lawsuits, and expected payback periods. Consumers pay US$80 per month or US$768 per year to compare up to five brands across more than 40 items, and can download up to 10 disclosure documents a month.

It charges for reducing the time needed to read and compare long documents, rather than for providing a simple list of brands.

Australia's FranchiseScope gives buyers comparison features for free and charges franchisors a monthly fee. Its published prices range from A$249 to A$1,699 per month, with an additional A$18 charge for each verified lead.

The service starts with government registration information and combines investment costs, fees, location information, and consultation requests in one place. The number of published brands is displayed differently across pages, so its actual coverage needs verification. Still, its model of attracting buyers with a free comparison screen and earning revenue from franchisor recruitment spending is worth examining.

Four things you can build now

1. A brand comparison report for advisers

• What it does: Creates a one-page report for three brands with store counts, company-owned-store status, interior cost per standard area, and questions about separate costs.
• Who uses it: Independent franchise advisers who recommend cafe or food-service brands to several prospective operators each month.
• Why now: You can test it by manually transferring public information, then reduce repeated entry after receiving data-access approval.
• First screen: Fields for the consultation client's preferred area, store size, and three brands to compare.

2. A neighbourhood store-overlap alert

• What it does: Shows, on a map and in numbers, how many stores of the same brand and the same industry are clustered around a desired address.
• Who uses it: A prospective franchisee considering a chicken or cafe location and concerned about overlapping delivery trade areas.
• Why now: Combining store-distribution data with map search can reduce work that people currently do one location at a time.
• First screen: Enter an address and a brand to immediately see store counts by radius and the distance to the nearest store.

3. A log for gaps between published costs and real quotes

• What it does: Records the difference between disclosure-document costs and quotes from franchise headquarters or contractors after aligning them to the same scope of work.
• Who uses it: A prospective franchisee who has received a headquarters quote but has not yet signed a franchise agreement or construction contract.
• Why now: It can use the published interior cost as a baseline to find missing items such as demolition, electrical work, and heating and cooling before a contract is signed.
• First screen: Before asking for the total quote, ask about construction area, value-added tax, demolition, electrical capacity upgrades, and whether heating and cooling are included.

4. An explanatory quote for interior contractors

• What it does: Creates a quote that distinguishes a brand's published benchmark amount from additional work required at the actual site.
• Who uses it: Local interior firms and small contractors seeking their first franchise-store construction job.
• Why now: When a quote is higher than the published amount, contractors need to explain the reason for the gap item by item to build trust before a contract.
• First screen: Enter the brand, store area, and condition of the existing facilities to separate basic work from site-specific additional work.

Why this matters where you are

Korea's public franchise disclosure system, its data-access approval process, and the 12-month approved usage period are Korean conditions that may differ in your market. Check whether your market has comparable public disclosure documents, store-location data, and restrictions on automated data use. Where the raw documents exist, there may still be room for a service that adjusts figures to real store conditions and makes missing cost items visible before a contract.

One thing to verify today

Over 30 minutes, call three independent franchise advisers, show them a screen for a three-brand comparison report, and ask whether they would use it in their next consultation at a test price of KRW 30,000. If at least two say they currently do the same work with spreadsheets, and at least one commits to a paid test, treat that as a reason to build the first version.