Book the Teardown
The Tech Stack Teardown · $4,500 · Five Business Days

Send the FDD.
Get the read.

One document and one 45-minute call. Five business days later you have an independent, benchmarked read of your technology posture: what your fees actually buy, where your vendors have you locked in, who owns your data, and what the AI assistants tell people about your brand. Written for the board, not the IT closet.

Book the Teardown → See What’s Inside

Fixed price · No discovery workshop · Your FDD is public anyway

The short version
5 days
From FDD in hand to executive readout
100%
Of the fee credits toward a Roadmap Sprint or retainer signed within 90 days
1 call
45 minutes of your time is the whole ask. We do the rest from the documents.

What You Get

A read you cannot get
anywhere else.

Your franchise disclosure document (FDD) already tells a sophisticated reader how your technology really works. Most franchisors have never had one read back to them that way.

The Core Document
Tech Posture Teardown Brief

10–14 pages. Your fee architecture against category norms. Your required vendor stack and where the lock-in sits. Your data-rights posture: who owns what when a franchisee leaves or a vendor contract ends. System-health signals from your outlet data. And three to five findings, each with the business consequence and the cheapest next test spelled out.

The Benchmark
Category Benchmark Card

Two pages. Your brand scored against its category in our FDD Industry Study, a proprietary, item-level study of franchise disclosure documents across 11 categories. Every comparison carries its sample size, so you know exactly how much weight each number deserves.

The Conversation
45-Minute Executive Readout

A working session on the findings with whoever should hear them: you, your CFO, your board. Recorded on request so the people who missed it hear it firsthand rather than secondhand.

The Follow-Through
30 Days of Email Follow-Up

Questions surface after the readout, usually from the board. For 30 days you can put them to me directly and get answers grounded in the analysis we already did.

The Lens

Five places your FDD
shows its hand.

An FDD is a legal disclosure, but it’s also an involuntary confession about how a franchise system really runs its technology. We read yours the way an acquirer’s diligence team would, then add one thing no document review can give you: what the AI assistants are actually saying.

01
Fee architecture
Royalty, ad fund, and technology fees (Items 5, 6, and 11 of your FDD) read against what comparable systems charge, and what franchisees get for them.
02
Required stack and lock-in
Which vendors are mandated, who holds the contracts, and what it would cost you to switch. Lock-in is a price you pay later; we make it visible now.
03
Data rights
Who owns customer and transaction data when a franchisee exits or you change vendors. This is the clause most franchisors discover during a dispute. Better to read it on a Tuesday.
04
System health signals
Outlet growth, transfers, and turnover from Item 20, the FDD section that reports outlet counts and changes. The numbers a buyer reads first.
05
AI-surface snapshot
What ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini answer when a customer or a franchise candidate asks about your brand. Captured with instrumentation, screenshots included.

How It Works

Five business days,
start to readout.

Day 1
Intake
The 45-minute call, plus your FDD and any context you want on the record. That’s the whole lift on your side.
Days 2–3
Analysis
Item-by-item document mining, the instrumented AI-surface capture, and benchmarking against your category panel.
Day 4
Draft and QA
The brief and benchmark card are written, checked, and tightened. Findings get their so-what and their cheapest next test.
Day 5
Readout
45 minutes with your leadership team on what we found and what to do about it, in priority order.

Who It’s For

Built for the moment
the question gets serious.

The Teardown is for CFOs, COOs, and CMOs at 50–300 unit franchisors, usually at one of these moments:

  • A board or PE conversation is arriving and technology will be on the table
  • A major vendor renewal or replatform decision is coming and you want an independent read first
  • You are new in the seat and inherited a stack nobody can fully explain
  • You want to know what the AI assistants are telling your customers and candidates, with evidence

The fee is a deposit.

100% of the Teardown fee credits toward a Roadmap Sprint or retainer signed within 90 days. If the findings lead to a bigger engagement, the $4,500 was your down payment. If they don’t, you still own a board-usable independent assessment, and we part as friends.

Your FDD is already public.
You may as well know what it says.

Book a 15-minute call. If the Teardown is the wrong tool for your situation, I’ll say so on the call.

Book the Teardown →