Loan record only — SBA data verified, FDD not yet in our corpus
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Food & Dining · independent · est. —
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is a quick-service restaurant chain built on its fried chicken menu, with sandwiches and sides. A franchisee operates freestanding or inline QSR locations with counter and drive-thru service, serving value-oriented lunch and dinner customers.
New to franchising? Start here
A franchise is a business where you (the franchisee) pay a company (the franchisor) for the right to open and run a location using their brand and system — think a local Anytime Fitness or Taco John's owned by a small-business owner, not the corporation.
Before you can buy in, U.S. law requires the franchisor to give you a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) — a long legal filing covering its fees, finances, and history. The numbers on this page come straight from that document:
- Franchise fee — the one-time cost to buy in.
- Royalty — the ongoing cut of your sales you pay the franchisor.
- Item 20 — how many locations opened and closed, the basis for our verdict (from Proven & strong down to Distressed — or Too new to judge).
The verdict
Not enough disclosure
Distress
No verified FDD extraction to judge from. Any figures shown are labelled sample data or independent federal records.
SBA loan defaults
13.5%
vs 14.8% avg across rated brands
Behind the verdict
the record, factor by factor · Item 20
No score available.
Systemwide units
Insufficient trend data.
We hold no Franchise Disclosure Document for Kentucky Fried Chicken, so this page carries no exit rate, fees, investment range, or Item 19 earnings claim. What it does carry is the federal loan record: every SBA 7(a) and 504 loan made to a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee since 1991 and how each one ended. That is an independent, sourced measure of how the brand's owner-operators actually fared — and for most brands it is the only outcome data that exists publicly.
Brands enter the index this way when they don't register in the states we crawl. We add the filing when we obtain it — see methodology for how coverage is built and what each evidence level means.
The lender's view
SBA 7(a)/504 loan performance · FY1991–present
Banks have made 233 SBA-backed loans to Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees since 1991. Of the 185 that have resolved, 13.5% were charged off (defaulted) rather than paid in full, versus 14.8% across 576 rated brands.
13.5%
25 of 185 resolved defaulted
74.8%
avg. charged-off $ ÷ approved $
10.1%
default rate × loss severity
$531,566
what recent franchisees borrowed
90 mo
approval → charge-off, defaulted loans
—
distinct banks lending
Charge-off rate by loan approval year (%)
SOURCE: SBA 7(a)/504 FOIA LOAN DATA (DATA.SBA.GOV), FY1991–PRESENT · MATCHED TO KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN BY FRANCHISE NAME · RESOLVED = CHARGED-OFF + PAID-IN-FULL
The owner's side of the deal
FDD × federal loan record
Who finances it
Wells Fargo Bank National Association
10.3% of this brand's loans
That lender charges off 15.6% of its loans to other franchise brands, vs 14.8% nationally.
Who buys it
67.9%
first-time franchise owners
The rest already owned at least one other franchise. Across the corpus, brands bought mostly by repeat operators charge off at roughly 10% versus 17% for brands sold mostly to newcomers.
Does experience help here?
+3.8pp
multi-unit vs single-unit owners
Owners of multiple units default at 19.4%; single-unit owners at 15.6%.
Computed from 233 SBA 7(a)/504 loans to Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees joined to the brand's own FDD. Debt service assumes level amortization at the average disclosed term and rate. A lender's rate excludes its loans to this brand, so it reads the lender, not the brand.
Labor record
US Dept. of Labor enforcement · franchisee-level · FY2005–present
Federal investigators have concluded 127 wage cases against operators of this system, recovering $603K in back wages for 1,080 workers, including 36 child-labor cases. Some of these cases are recent, not ancient history. These cases name franchisee-owned locations, not the franchisor itself.
Concluded cases
127
Back wages owed
$603K
Employees affected
1,080
Since 2020
7
36 of these cases involved child-labor violations, covering 194 minors across the system's franchised locations.
Read this carefully. The employers in these cases are individual Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees — separately owned businesses operating under the brand name — not Kentucky Fried Chicken itself. The franchisor is not the respondent and in most cases is not a party. What the record shows is how this system's operators run their payrolls, which is worth knowing before you become one of them. Counts rise with system size and with age: a 20-year-old, 10,000-unit system will out-count a young one regardless of conduct. Source: DOL Wage and Hour Division concluded compliance actions, FY2005–present, most recent finding 2025.
Distress signals
news-sourced · bankruptcies, closures, lawsuits
No recent closures, bankruptcies, or major lawsuits found in the news for Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's a good sign — but it reflects news coverage, not a guarantee.
A broker is paid by the franchisor to place you. An independent CPA is paid by you — and the job is pressure-testing Kentucky Fried Chicken's numbers, including talking you out of a bad deal.
Talk to an independent CPA before you buy →