The SBA guarantees the loans people take out to buy a franchise, and it publishes what happened to every one of them. Across the 58 brands below, $190.0M of those loans were written off. The gap between the best and worst brand is not small: DICKEY'S BARBECUE PIT charged off 34.2% of its resolved loans, and several brands charged off none at all.
This measures the loan, not the brand's quality. A charge-off means the borrower stopped paying and the government took the loss. It usually means the franchisee's business failed. It does not tell you why, and a good operator can fail at a strong brand.
Worst first. Rate is charged-off loans divided by resolved loans, meaning loans that have finished: either paid in full or charged off.
| Franchise brand | Charged off | Loans | Written off |
|---|---|---|---|
| DICKEY'S BARBECUE PIT | 34.2% | 54 of 158 | $12.2M |
| Which Wich | 25.7% | 29 of 113 | $6.0M |
| MENCHIE'S | 17.6% | 33 of 187 | $6.4M |
| AMAZING LASH STUDIO | 13.8% | 16 of 116 | $3.3M |
| EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS | 13.8% | 26 of 189 | $3.2M |
| ANYTIME FITNESS | 12.6% | 76 of 601 | $21.7M |
| SNAP FITNESS | 11.0% | 16 of 145 | $1.8M |
| SUBWAY | 10.4% | 69 of 663 | $11.5M |
| MASSAGE ENVY | 10.3% | 31 of 300 | $10.8M |
| LIBERTY TAX SERVICE | 9.8% | 12 of 122 | $2.0M |
| PAPA MURPHY'S | 9.0% | 10 of 111 | $1.7M |
| FIREHOUSE SUBS | 8.3% | 30 of 361 | $5.6M |
| SPORT CLIPS | 8.3% | 27 of 325 | $3.9M |
| FASTSIGNS | 7.9% | 11 of 140 | $1.6M |
| FEDEX GROUND | 7.7% | 15 of 194 | $4.4M |
| LITTLE CAESAR PIZZA | 7.6% | 15 of 197 | $3.4M |
| THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE | 7.4% | 8 of 108 | $2.2M |
| MARCO'S PIZZA | 7.2% | 16 of 221 | $3.2M |
| JIMMY JOHN'S | 7.1% | 40 of 562 | $11.4M |
| ACE HARDWARE | 7.0% | 18 of 256 | $4.1M |
| BUDGET BLINDS | 6.6% | 7 of 106 | $743k |
| SERVPRO | 4.5% | 13 of 287 | $3.9M |
| QUALITY INN | 4.5% | 6 of 133 | $9.9M |
| KIDDIE ACADEMY | 4.4% | 7 of 160 | $2.0M |
| SMOOTHIE KING | 4.3% | 7 of 162 | $1.4M |
| SUBWAY SANDWICH SHOP | 4.2% | 23 of 548 | $2.7M |
| DAIRY QUEEN | 4.1% | 5 of 122 | $1.9M |
| ALLSTATE INSURANCE | 4.0% | 7 of 173 | $794k |
| SUPERCUTS | 3.6% | 7 of 197 | $676k |
| THE GODDARD SCHOOL | 3.1% | 6 of 194 | $2.1M |
| MOTEL 6 | 3.1% | 5 of 162 | $2.0M |
| TROPICAL SMOOTHIE | 3.1% | 4 of 131 | $654k |
| EUROPEAN WAX CENTER | 2.8% | 7 of 246 | $1.6M |
| BEST WESTERN INN | 2.4% | 4 of 164 | $5.9M |
| SUPER 8 | 2.4% | 4 of 165 | $3.1M |
| LITTLE CEASAR'S PIZZA | 2.4% | 3 of 124 | $778k |
| JERSEY MIKE'S | 2.4% | 3 of 126 | $986k |
| GREAT CLIPS | 2.3% | 5 of 222 | $841k |
| HOME INSTEAD SENIOR CARE | 2.0% | 3 of 147 | $839k |
| QUALITY INN/QUALITY SUITES, HOTEL OR RESORT | 1.8% | 4 of 225 | $9.2M |
| DAYS INN | 1.6% | 4 of 248 | $7.1M |
| ORANGE THEORY FITNESS | 1.6% | 5 of 312 | $1.4M |
| DUNKIN' DONUTS | 1.6% | 3 of 191 | $2.9M |
| ECONO LODGE | 1.6% | 2 of 129 | $1.0M |
| CHEVRON (GAS STATION) | 1.5% | 2 of 133 | $1.5M |
| DOMINO'S PIZZA | 1.4% | 3 of 216 | $397k |
| RED ROOF INN | 1.3% | 2 of 152 | $705k |
| COMFORT/ COMFORT INN & SUITES/ COMFORT SUITES | 1.3% | 2 of 156 | $1.5M |
| SPORTS CLIPS | 1.2% | 2 of 164 | $210k |
| DAIRY QUEEN GRILL & CHILL/TEXAS DQ | 0.9% | 1 of 110 | $105k |
| THE UPS STORE | 0.5% | 2 of 420 | $257k |
| AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL | 0.4% | 1 of 268 | $120k |
| CHRISTIAN BROTHERS AUTOMOTIVE | 0.0% | 0 of 139 | $0k |
| PLANET FITNESS | 0.0% | 0 of 111 | $0k |
| NOTHING BUNDT CAKES | 0.0% | 0 of 116 | $0k |
| PRIMROSE SCHOOLS | 0.0% | 0 of 149 | $0k |
| WINGSTOP | 0.0% | 0 of 110 | $0k |
| CLUB PILATES | 0.0% | 0 of 151 | $0k |
Source. The SBA 7(a) FOIA loan book, published by the SBA, file sba7a.csv. It is free, needs no
account, and contains every 7(a) loan with its franchise brand and final status. Computed
2026-07-29.
Only finished loans count. A loan that is still being repaid has not succeeded or failed yet, so counting it would flatter every brand. Cancelled loans never funded. And the SBA withholds the current status of many recent loans under FOIA Exemption 4, so those outcomes are unknown and are excluded rather than guessed at.
Brands were merged across their SBA codes, and this is the part most analyses get wrong. A single brand often holds several franchise codes, because the SBA runs a newer directory scheme alongside its older numeric one. Anytime Fitness holds three, and taken separately they read 5.4%, 11.9% and 23.0%. Reporting any one of those as "the" rate would be wrong. Every row here combines all of a brand's codes. 45 of these 58 brands span more than one code.
A brand needs 100 finished loans to appear. Below that a couple of failures swing the rate wildly. The loan count is printed on every row so you can judge the sample yourself.
Newer brands look better than they may be. Loans need years to fail. Most brands here have a similar mix of loan ages, and several of the zero-charge-off brands are older than the worst performers, so the comparison mostly holds. Club Pilates is the exception: its typical loan is about two years younger than the rest of this table, so its clean record has had less time to be tested.
Similar names are not always merged. "Sport Clips" and "Sports Clips" appear separately because they are spelled differently in the government file, and guessing that two spellings are the same company is how you publish a wrong number about a real business. Where you see a brand you expect twice, read both rows.