Midas

Midas's franchise fee structure depends on your situation: $35,000 for a standard new shop, $17,500 for a conversion, $10,000 for an existing franchisee's first additional location, $5,000 for subsequent locations, and $0 for VetFran applicants. An $10,000 application deposit is also required. The Marketing Support Program requires a $20,000 franchisee commitment, with Midas matching $10,000 (or $60,000 under the Grand Opening Pilot program). This matching structure is unusual and essentially reduces your effective marketing spend — worth probing what qualification requirements apply.

Total investment for a new 8-bay shop: $342K to $925K. The midpoint of roughly $630K is a reasonable planning figure. Equipment and tools are the dominant cost at $175K–$375K; rent for three months adds $15K–$75K; security deposit $0–$50K; branding $10K–$40K; inventory $25K–$100K. If you're converting an existing automotive shop, investment runs $107K–$926K — a similarly wide range driven by how much equipment and infrastructure is already in place.

The royalty is 10% on most automotive services, 6% on tires, 2% on batteries, and 0% on exempt categories (towing, car rentals, inspection stickers). Critically, Midas directs 50% of all royalty payments back into media spend on your behalf — so on a $1.23M revenue store with a 10% royalty, you pay $123K in royalties but $61.5K of that funds local media for your store. The effective net cost of the royalty (cash out of your pocket as a franchise fee, not media spend) is closer to $61.5K, or approximately 5%. This structure is different from how most franchises operate and makes direct comparison difficult — but it also means Midas has a financial interest in your advertising effectiveness. Technology fees are not separately disclosed in Item 6, which is unusual and worth clarifying during due diligence.

Midas provides two-part Item 19 data for fiscal year 2024 (April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024).

Part A — All 941 reporting shops: - Average gross revenue: $1,234,101

Part B — 438 shops with P&L data: - Average gross revenue: $1,328,735 - Cost of goods sold: 27.9% of revenue - Gross profit: 72.1% of revenue - Total labor: 29.6% of revenue - Total operating expenses: 58.9% of revenue - Net income: 13.2% of revenue

At $1.23M average revenue (Part A), a 13.2% net income margin implies approximately $162K in net income per store. However, how Midas defines 'net income' in this context is important to clarify — it may or may not include owner compensation, royalties, or the media-directed portion of royalties. Validate the exact definition with a Midas franchisee or during validation calls.

If $162K is pre-royalty net income, and you subtract the 10% royalty of $123K (half of which is media), your cash royalty cost is $61.5K, leaving approximately $100K in owner cash benefit. If $162K is post-royalty, you're looking at $162K before debt service on a $630K investment — a reasonable 25% cash-on-cash return before financing.

The two-scenario interpretation matters enormously here, and it's exactly the kind of question a franchise attorney should help you nail down before signing.

Midas's unit count has stabilized and returned to modest growth: -7 units in 2022, +4 in 2023, +8 in 2024. At 975 total locations at year-end 2024, the system is near its recent floor and recovering. Transfers are very active — 83 in 2022, 90 in 2023, 73 in 2024 — indicating a dynamic resale market. For a 975-unit system, 73–90 transfers per year means roughly 8–9% of the system changes hands annually. That's high, and interpretation is context-dependent: an active resale market can mean operators are profitably exiting, or it can mean churn driven by underperformance.

Midas is owned by TBC Corporation, which is privately held by Sumitomo Corporation of America. Unlike Maaco and Meineke (which share Driven Brands as a parent), Midas operates independently under TBC's portfolio alongside NTB, Tire Kingdom, and Big O Tires. TBC's tire distribution relationships give Midas franchisees some supply chain advantages. The brand has operated since 1956 — one of the oldest automotive franchises in the U.S. — giving it category-leading recognition in the muffler/exhaust/brake space, even as the service scope has broadened.

The 10% royalty headline is the first thing every prospect reacts to — and understanding the media-credit structure is essential before drawing conclusions. If you're evaluating Midas alongside Jiffy Lube (4%), Meineke (5% blended), or Maaco (8%), the apparent 10% overstates your true cash cost. But the media money is being spent on your behalf, which means you have less control over how your advertising dollars are allocated. Ask specifically: who decides where the media money goes, can you see the reporting, and what recourse do you have if the media spend underperforms?

The disclosure that P&L data in the FDD was noted to be image-based in text extraction (extraction confidence 0.8 versus 0.95 for other items) is a reminder to read the actual FDD tables directly — don't rely on third-party summaries for the exact P&L percentages.

With 73–90 transfers per year in a 975-unit system, this is a franchise where resale is common. That's a double-edged sword: you can buy an existing shop with established revenue rather than building from scratch, but it also means you need to do thorough diligence on any acquisition to understand why the seller is exiting.

The fiscal year runs April 1 to March 31, not calendar year — which means comparative analysis against calendar-year competitors requires adjustment.