Quick answer: There are approximately 800,000 franchise locations operating in 2026, distributed across roughly 3,200 active franchise systems. The number has grown steadily since 2021 as multi-unit operators have absorbed independent businesses and new brands have scaled rapidly in health, fitness, and home services.
Franchismo tracks 4,200+ franchise brands in total; approximately 3,200 filed a current FDD in the trailing 24 months and are counted as active.
Franchise locations by category
The US franchise universe concentrates in a small number of large categories. QSR remains the largest single category by location count, but home services and fitness have produced the fastest unit growth over the past five years.
Approximate US location counts (2026)
- QSR & food service: ~210,000 locations
- Retail & convenience: ~140,000 locations
- Home & personal services: ~125,000 locations
- Automotive services: ~70,000 locations
- Lodging: ~58,000 locations
- Health & fitness: ~45,000 locations
- Education & child services: ~28,000 locations
- Other (real estate, financial, business services): ~125,000 locations
How ownership is distributed
Most US franchise locations are owned by multi-unit operators rather than single-store franchisees. Roughly 165,000 active multi-unit operators control the majority of US franchise units. The ten largest operators each run more than 500 locations, often across multiple brands.
Franchismo's 450,000+ owner contacts span both multi-unit operators (~165,000) and single-unit franchisees, plus secondary contacts — controllers, ops leads, and partners — at larger operator groups.
For vendors, lenders, and acquirers, this concentration matters: a few hundred conversations with the right operators cover more US locations than thousands of conversations with single-unit owners.
Growth by category, 2021–2026
Directional growth observed across Franchismo's monthly tracking and public FDD filings. Specific percentages vary by source and methodology — figures below are rounded Franchismo estimates, not audited industry totals.
- Health & fitness: among the fastest-growing categories, led by boutique fitness and recovery concepts.
- Home services: strong unit growth, with restoration, painting, and pest control leading.
- QSR / dessert & beverage: notable expansion driven by cookies, coffee, and smoothies.
- Personal care: steady unit growth.
- Retail & convenience: roughly flat on units — more consolidation than greenfield.
Why this matters for go-to-market teams
Franchise operators are an unusually attractive prospect base: they manage hourly workforces, operate across multiple locations, sign their own contracts, and look like SMBs at the location level but enterprises at the operator level. Reaching them efficiently requires owner-level data, mapped across brands.
That's what Franchismo provides: owner-level contact data on every US franchise system, refreshed monthly, exportable to CSV.
Source methodology
Counts above are aggregated from FDD Item 20 disclosures filed in 2025 and 2026, state registration filings (CA, NY, IL, MD, MN, VA, WA, and others), and the Franchismo internal dataset. Numbers are approximate — the franchise universe shifts every month as brands open and close units. We refresh estimates monthly.