Fastest-growing franchises

Growth is one of the first things buyers look at when they size up a franchise, and for good reason. A brand that keeps adding locations is one that new owners keep choosing after doing their own homework, and one with enough momentum to pay for national marketing, better systems and new products. A brand that is losing locations has to explain why.

The rankings below measure growth as the change in a brand’s US locations, franchised and company-owned together, from the start of 2023 to the end of 2025. Counting both matters. When a franchisor buys restaurants back from its owners, or sells its own restaurants to franchisees, the franchised count swings even though no doors opened or closed. The percentage rankings only include brands that started with at least 50 locations, since a jump from five to fifteen says little.

The fastest-growing franchises

Dave's Hot Chicken leads the list, growing from 92 to 358 US locations in three years. The brands near the top have two things in common: most are young, and most sell one focused product that is easy to repeat in a new town.

Youth sports and fitness show up more than any other field. KidStrong (+174%) and D1 Training (+103%) both sell monthly training programs for children and teenagers. Among adult fitness brands, Hotworx grew +99% and Club Pilates +55%, while the big-box gym brands grew far more slowly. Fitness as a whole was close to flat: the winners grew about as fast as the losers shrank.

Senior care is the other steady riser. Seniors Helping Seniors grew +84% and Amada Senior Care +65%. These are home-based businesses with low build-out costs, so new owners can open quickly, and demand rises with an aging population. See the full home care franchise list for costs.

Desserts round out the leaders. Nothing Bundt Cakes added 304 locations (+64%) and Crumbl 411 (+60%). A short menu makes a store easy to staff and to copy into new markets, which lets a brand open hundreds of them quickly. The open question for any fast-growing dessert brand is whether sales hold up once the novelty wears off, which is why a newer brand’s earnings figures, if it shares them, deserve a close read.

Which franchises added the most locations

Percentages favor small brands. In raw numbers, the biggest gains came from large systems that open hundreds of units every year. Jersey Mike’s added 840 locations, growing +35% from an already large base of 2,387. 7 Brew is the outlier: it started the period with 40 drive-thru coffee stands and ended with 602, the steepest climb of any brand here.

Big net gains don’t always mean fast growth. A brand with 8,000 locations can add 600 and still grow under ten percent. What these brands offer instead is proof that the model works in many markets, a deep bench of existing owners to talk to, and suppliers, lenders and landlords who already know the brand.

Franchises that shrank

Of the 178 brands with figures for these years, 55 ended with fewer locations than they started with. Subway lost the most: 1,803 US locations, leaving 18,773. That is a −8.8% change for a system that is still the largest here by far.

In percentage terms the steepest declines were at TGI Fridays (−73%), whose company-owned restaurants went from 158 to 0, and the boutique gym 9Round (−62%). Hair salons lost ground too: Supercuts ended with 469 fewer locations (−21%).

A shrinking brand isn’t automatically a bad buy. Closing weak locations can leave the survivors stronger, and resales in a mature system can come at a discount. But the burden of proof shifts. Ask the franchisor why units closed, whether owners left on their own or were terminated, and what is being done about it, and then ask former owners the same questions.

Growth by industry

The typical brand here grew +7.1% over the three years. Sports franchises grew fastest as a group, with a middle value of +41%, while real estate franchises came last at −9.5%. Industries with only a few brands can swing on one or two names, so read the brand lists as well as the median.

What growth tells you, and what it doesn’t

A rising location count tells you that people keep buying the franchise. It doesn’t tell you that the people who already bought it are making money. In a fast-growing system, a large share of locations may be less than two years old, too young to show what a mature unit earns. Owners in their first year are often still paying off the build-out and learning the business, and the franchisor’s attention is split between them and the next wave of openings.

So read growth alongside two other numbers on every brand page. The first is closures: how many franchised locations closed, were terminated or changed hands each year. A brand that opens 200 units and closes 150 is growing far less comfortably than one that opens 60 and closes three. The second is whether the brand shares sales or earnings figures, and for which locations. A young brand that publishes sales for its first openings gives you something to test against what owners tell you.

Then talk to owners, especially those who opened in the last two or three years. Ask how long it took to open, how close the cost came to the estimate, how sales compare with what they expected, and whether support has kept up as the brand has grown. In a shrinking system, ask the same questions of people who left. You can see openings and closures for any brand on its page, and line up a few brands at once with the compare tool.