Two columns most unit-economics worksheets leave blank: who sets your price, and what it costs to leave a vendor

A unit-economics worksheet is usually built from the numbers a franchisor supplies: average unit volume, food cost, labour cost, rent, royalty, marketing fund. Those are the numbers the brand is prepared to give you. Two filings in 2026 point at two columns that almost never appear and that can move a unit from viable to marginal.

Column one: the exit cost of a specified vendor

Start with the number, because it is specific. According to Insurance Journal on 3 November 2026, reporting a suit brought by the US Federal Trade Commission and eight states against restaurant technology company Toast, the complaint describes early termination fees of USD 150 per remaining month of contract, and one case in which the fee exceeded USD 5,000.

Put that on a worksheet. A three-year agreement cancelled after twelve months leaves twenty-four months. At USD 150 a month that is USD 3,600 payable on exit, on top of whatever replacement system costs. If your model assumes you can switch vendors when a better one arrives, that assumption has a price and it belongs in the sheet.

The same report describes add-ons allegedly charged without consent, naming employee timekeeping, payroll processing and payroll tax filing, and a pay-as-you-go plan whose fees the complaint alleges were deceptive. These are allegations and Toast has said it will defend itself. For modelling purposes the allegation is not the point. The point is that the add-on layer exists, is billed monthly, and is rarely in the figures a franchisor hands a candidate.

How to build the column

• Line A: contract term in months, and months remaining at the earliest realistic switch date.
• Line B: stated early termination fee per remaining month.
• Line C: A times B, as a one-off exit cost in the year you would switch.
• Line D: the list of add-on modules in the quote, each with its own monthly price, flagged as either required by the franchisor or optional to you.

If line D cannot be filled because the quote bundles everything, that is your finding. Ask for the unbundled price list in writing before signing anything.

Column two: pricing authority

The second column is not a cost. It is a right, and it determines whether your revenue line is yours to manage.

According to PYMNTS on 8 October 2026, summarising Reuters reporting from 5 and 8 October, a federal antitrust class action alleges that McDonald's pressures franchisees to use its AI-powered algorithmic pricing and that this raises consumer prices. The company's stated position is that each franchisee sets its own prices, and that AI does not set the price of a Big Mac or any other menu item.

Whatever the court decides, the dispute itself is the lesson for a candidate. Two parties to the same franchise relationship can hold different views on who controls the menu price, and the difference only becomes visible when someone sues. The same report notes the case may be the first to bring such claims against franchisees of the same brand rather than against competing companies.

How to build the column

• Quote the clause. Find the exact contract language on pricing and paste it into the worksheet, not a summary of it.
• Mark each menu category as franchisee-set, franchisor-recommended, or franchisor-mandated.
• For every recommended category, write down what happens if you deviate. If nothing in the agreement says, that is a question for the franchisor in writing.
• Run your model twice. Once at your own planned prices, once at the franchisor-recommended prices. The gap between the two is the value of the pricing right in your market.

Why these two columns belong together

A vendor you cannot leave and a price you cannot set are the same kind of exposure: both convert what looks like an operating decision into a fixed condition. A unit can absorb a high cost it controls far better than a moderate cost it does not.

This is also the pair that most often gets settled verbally during recruitment and never written down. The worksheet is where that gets fixed, because a blank cell is a question you have not asked yet.

What we do not know

Both cases are unresolved. The Toast complaint has not been tested in court, Toast has said it will defend itself, and the USD 150 per month figure is as described in the complaint rather than as proven.

The PYMNTS report gives no dollar figures and no store counts for the McDonald's case, so we do not know the alleged size of the pricing effect. We also do not know whether a court will treat a franchisor recommendation as pressure.

Neither source gives a typical early termination fee across the vendor market, so the USD 150 per remaining month cannot be treated as an industry norm. It is one documented figure in one complaint, useful as a sanity check on a quote rather than as a benchmark.

This article is information, not legal or investment advice.