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Aug 20

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20 Questions To Ask Franchise Owners Before You Commit

The FDD tells you what the franchisor must disclose. The sales process tells you what the brand wants you to hear. Validation calls tell you the truth, and Item 20 of every FDD hands you the phone numbers. Here are the twenty questions to ask, organized by theme, with what to listen for in every answer.

Updated August 20, 2026

A conversation between owners: validation calls are where franchise diligence gets honest

The Short Version

Validation calls, conversations with current and former owners from Item 20's lists, are the most honest source in franchise due diligence, and confident brands arrange them rather than merely permitting them.
Run five to ten calls across tenures and market types, include former owners, ask open questions, listen four to one, and respect what owners keep private; patterns across calls are the findings.
The twenty questions cover five themes: the beginning, the money, the support, the daily reality, and the relationship, and question 17, would you do it again, is the referendum that counts.
A franchisor's posture toward validation is itself data: hesitation and curation are warnings, and validation built into the process, as at STRIDE Fitness, is the confident version.

What Is A Franchise Validation Call?

A validation call is a conversation between a prospective franchisee and a current (or former) owner in the system they are evaluating, and it is the single most honest source of information in franchise due diligence. The Franchise Disclosure Document tells you what the franchisor must disclose; the sales process tells you what the brand wants you to hear; validation calls tell you what it is actually like, from people who signed the same agreement you are reading and lived the result. Item 20 of every FDD hands you the roster: contact lists of current franchisees and of owners who left in the last fiscal year.

Serious brands do not merely tolerate validation, they arrange it, because a system whose owners tell the truth well is a system with nothing to hide. That is how it works at STRIDE Fitness, where candidates speak with current owners as part of the awarding process, and if you would rather start that process than read about it, the qualification check takes about two minutes.

How To Run Validation Calls Well

Four rules turn friendly chats into real diligence. Call enough owners to see a pattern: five to ten calls across different tenures and market types, because one owner is an anecdote and eight are a dataset. Call former owners too, from Item 20's departure list, since the exit story is the part of the brochure nobody writes. Ask open questions and then stop talking: you are there to listen at a ratio of about four to one, and leading questions ("the support's great, right?") collect politeness instead of truth. And respect what owners keep private: they are speaking for themselves about their own experience, generously and on their own time, so let them choose their specifics and read the pattern across calls rather than pressing any single owner for numbers.

Then bring a list. Not because conversation is bad, but because the good calls wander, and the list is how you leave with what you came for. Here are the twenty questions, organized by theme:

The Beginning (Questions 1–4)

1. Why did you choose this brand over the others you looked at?
Listen for: a reason that still holds up. Owners who can name what the diligence showed them tend to be owners who did diligence, and their standards calibrate yours.
2. What do you know now that you wish you had known before signing?
Listen for: the gap between the brochure and the business. Every honest owner has an answer; the size and severity of it is the data.
3. How did your presale and opening actually go compared to the plan?
Listen for: whether the launch playbook was real. Specifics about the campaign, the events, and the support tell you whether the opening system works when it leaves the binder.
4. If you were starting over, what would you do differently?
Listen for: operational lessons, not regret. Owners who answer with tactics (site, hiring, timing) are giving you a head start; owners who answer with doubts are telling you something bigger.

The Money (Questions 5–8)

5. How did your actual startup costs compare to the Item 7 estimate?
Listen for: whether the FDD's investment table survives contact with reality, and which rows ran hot. This cross-examines the document with the person who lived it.
6. How long did it take to reach the point where the studio covered its own costs, compared to what you expected?
Listen for: trajectory and honesty, not a promise. Owners share what they are comfortable sharing; the pattern across several calls matters more than any single answer.
7. Were there costs that surprised you in the first year?
Listen for: the line items nobody's spreadsheet had. Repeated surprises across multiple owners belong in your working capital plan.
8. Do you feel the ongoing fees are worth what you receive for them?
Listen for: value language versus resentment language. Owners rarely love fees, but there is a difference between a fair-trade shrug and a list of grievances.

A note on this group: current owners speaking about their own experience are generally free to share what they choose, but many keep specifics private, and that is their right. The franchisor itself may only present performance figures in Item 19 of the FDD, which is exactly why owner conversations and the document work as a pair: our guide to reading an FDD shows what to verify on paper before you verify it by phone.

The Support (Questions 9–12)

9. What does the brand's support actually look like week to week?
Listen for: rhythm and names. Real support has a cadence, structured calls, real people, and owners describe it specifically; hollow support gets described in generalities.
10. Tell me about a time something went wrong. How did the franchisor show up?
Listen for: the crisis story. Every business has a bad week; what the brand did during one is the truest support data that exists.
11. How effective has the marketing system been at actually driving members?
Listen for: results talk, channel by channel, and whether the owner feels like a participant or a bystander in their own marketing.
12. Did the training genuinely prepare you and your team to operate?
Listen for: whether the owner felt ready on day one, and what they had to figure out themselves. The delta is what you will have to figure out too.

The Daily Reality (Questions 13–16)

13. What does your typical week look like now, and how many hours do you put in?
Listen for: the honest number, by ownership model. Compare answers from owner-operators and manager-run owners separately, and against what the brand told you.
14. What has your experience been hiring and keeping good staff?
Listen for: the hardest operational problem in fitness. Listen for whether the brand's recruiting support showed up and whether turnover is a crisis or a rhythm.
15. What is the hardest part of running this business?
Listen for: whether the hard parts are the ones you can live with. Every business has them; you are choosing which ones will be yours.
16. What do your members love most about the studio?
Listen for: energy. An owner who lights up answering this runs a healthy community, and the answer doubles as your future marketing message.

Our Owners Will Tell You The Truth

Validation is built into the STRIDE Fitness awarding process. Qualify, and you will speak with the people who own studios, not just the people who award them.

See If I Qualify → Instant check. Qualified candidates unlock the calendar on the spot.

The Relationship And The Future (Questions 17–20)

17. Knowing everything you know now, would you make the same decision again?
Listen for: the king question, and the only acceptable pattern across your calls is a strong majority of real yeses. Hesitation is an answer too.
18. Are you planning, or would you consider, opening another location?
Listen for: conviction with money behind it. Owners reinvesting in the system is the strongest endorsement that exists; a system where nobody wants a second unit is telling you why.
19. How would you describe communication between owners and the franchisor's leadership?
Listen for: whether owners feel heard: how feedback travels, what changed because owners asked, and whether the relationship feels like partnership or paperwork.
20. What advice would you give someone considering this brand?
Listen for: the closing gift. Owners often save their most honest sentence for this question, and it is the one to write down verbatim.

Reading The Answers Like A Pro

The calls produce impressions; diligence turns them into signal. Patterns beat anecdotes: one frustrated owner is a person having a year, four owners frustrated about the same thing is a system property. Weight by tenure: a year-one owner is telling you about the launch experience, a year-five owner about the durability, and you need both. Calibrate the mood: small-business owners are candid people in a demanding business, so listen past tone for content, and treat both uniform gloom and uniform cheerleading with the same suspicion. Then keep the tally that matters: question 17, asked on every call. A system where the strong majority of owners would sign again, and where several are building or considering their next unit, has passed the only referendum that counts, the one voted on by people who paid to be there.

One more signal worth naming: how the franchisor behaves about all this. A brand that hesitates to connect you with owners, curates you toward a hand-picked two, or gets vague about the departure list has answered a question you did not have to ask. The confident version looks like the opposite, validation offered before you request it, because the owners are the proof. That is the standard we hold ourselves to at STRIDE Fitness: candidates meet current owners as part of the awarding process, the FDD conversation happens with counsel welcome, and the qualification check that starts it all runs instantly, with qualified candidates booking their call on the spot.

Questions, Answered

What is a franchise validation call?

A conversation between a prospective franchisee and a current or former owner in the system being evaluated, used to verify what the FDD and the sales process claim. Item 20 of the FDD provides the contact lists. Validation calls are the most honest source in franchise due diligence because the people answering signed the same agreement you are considering and lived the result.

How many franchise owners should I call before deciding?

Five to ten, chosen deliberately: a mix of tenures (first-year owners for the launch story, veteran owners for durability), a mix of market types resembling yours, and at least one or two former owners from Item 20's departure list. One call is an anecdote; a spread of calls is a dataset, and the patterns across them are the actual findings.

What are the most important questions to ask a franchisee before buying?

If you only get five: What do you know now that you wish you knew before signing? How did actual costs compare to the Item 7 estimate? Tell me about a time something went wrong and how the franchisor showed up. What does your typical week really look like? And the king question: knowing everything you know now, would you make the same decision again? The full twenty, organized by theme, are in the guide above.

Can franchise owners share their revenue numbers with me?

Owners speaking for themselves about their own experience are generally free to share what they choose, and many will discuss their journey candidly while keeping exact figures private, which is their right. The franchisor itself is different: it may only present performance figures through Item 19 of the FDD. Read the pattern across multiple calls rather than pressing any single owner, and verify the paper side in the FDD.

Should I talk to former franchisees too?

Yes, deliberately. Item 20 lists owners who left the system in the last fiscal year, and the exit story is the part of due diligence no sales process will hand you. Some departures are ordinary life (retirement, relocation, a sale); a pattern of exits with the same complaint is a system property. If departing owners were asked to sign confidentiality provisions, the FDD must disclose that, and it is worth asking about.

What if a franchisor discourages me from calling its owners?

Treat it as the loudest answer in your diligence. The owner lists are in Item 20 of every FDD precisely so candidates can call freely, and confident brands arrange validation rather than merely permitting it. Curation toward a hand-picked few, vagueness about the departure list, or discomfort with the process itself tells you how the system relates to its owners' honest opinions.

How does validation work in the STRIDE Fitness awarding process?

It is built in, not merely allowed: qualified candidates speak with current STRIDE Fitness owners as part of the awarding process, after the FDD and unit economics review with the Franchise Development team, where counsel is welcome. The process is built for candidates who do the homework, and it starts with a qualification check that runs instantly, with qualified candidates booking their call on the spot.

See if you qualify →

Mayra Rosner, STRIDE Fitness franchise owner

I owned multiple Club Pilates studios before this. When I decided what to build next, STRIDE Fitness stood out.
Mayra Rosner, Owner, STRIDE Fitness Southampton

STRIDE Fitness awards territories market by market, and once a market is awarded, it is closed. The qualification form takes about two minutes, and it is the only way to see what is open in your market.

See If I Qualify → Instant qualification check. Qualified candidates book their call on the spot. No cost to check, and the complete Franchise Disclosure Document is provided during the awarding process.

Keep Reading

How To Read An FDD: Every Item Explained How To Learn Franchising As A First-Time Owner How Much Does A Fitness Franchise Cost? All STRIDE Fitness Franchise Opportunities