Every franchise sold in the United States comes with a Franchise Disclosure Document, and Item 12 of it says what territory, if any, the franchisee gets. Several states publish these documents, so the answer for any brand is a public record. We read Item 12 for 38 brands to see how territories are actually defined, because that definition is what a routing system has to enforce.
We sell territory software, so we have a stake in the answer. The facts below come from the filings, not from us.
The short version
- Territories are drawn in one unit and sized in another. Most home service brands draw the territory as a set of ZIP codes, counties or city limits, and size it with a count: people, households, or people of a certain age.
- Many food and fitness brands grant nothing at all. Six of the 38 grant no territory, and several more protect only a radius of a mile or two.
- Territories move. Filings let the franchisor redraw a territory when sales fall short, sell extra ZIP codes, or shrink protection to a radius around an office.
- Almost every protected territory has holes. National accounts, online orders, other brands the franchisor owns, and venues like airports and campuses are carved out again and again.
How the territory is drawn
| How the boundary is described | Brands |
|---|---|
| A population count, drawn from local boundaries | 9 |
| A list of ZIP codes | 7 |
| A radius around the location | 6 |
| No territory granted | 6 |
| Counties or municipalities | 5 |
| A mix of the above | 2 |
| A household count | 1 |
| Streets drawn on a map | 1 |
| Driving distance | 1 |
The categories overlap more than the table suggests. A brand that sizes its territory by population still has to write the boundary down somehow, and when it does, it is usually ZIP codes, county lines or streets.
Home services, care and staffing
| Brand | Filing | How it is sized |
|---|---|---|
| Aire Serv | 2026 | 100,000 to 300,000 people |
| Mr. Electric | 2023 | 100,000 to 300,000 people |
| Rainbow Restoration | 2025 | 100,000 to 500,000 people |
| Mold Medics | 2026 | About 250,000 people, by city, county, ZIP or street lines |
| Weed Man | 2025 | Up to 150,000 people, drawn from county, township and census tract lines and highways |
| Lawn Doctor | 2025 | At least 10,000 single family homes |
| College Hunks Hauling Junk | 2026 | Zones of 300,000 to 400,000 people |
| 1-800-GOT-JUNK? | 2026 | At least eight subterritories of 62,500 to 75,000 people |
| Two Men and a Junk Truck | 2026 | 100,000 to 600,000 people depending on market |
| Home Instead | 2026 | At least 10,000 people aged 65 and over |
| Visiting Angels | 2026 | Population tiers up to 325,000, priced per tier |
| Comfort Keepers | 2025 | At least 220,000 people, as ZIP codes |
| BrightStar Care | 2025 | 200,000 to 300,000 people with at least 15,000 aged 65 and over |
| Griswold Home Care | 2026 | 250,000 people or 25,000 aged 65 and over, whichever is greater |
| Always Best Care | 2026 | At least 20,000 people aged 65 and over |
| Senior Helpers | 2025 | Case by case, using residents aged 75 and over |
| Labor Finders | 2026 | One or more counties |
| Spherion | 2026 | Cities, counties, townships or ZIP codes |
| Express Employment Professionals | 2025 | By available jobs in the area, no minimum |
| Mathnasium | 2026 | At least 2,500 children aged 5 to 19 |
| Dogtopia | 2023 | A 3 mile radius, or an area with 50,000 target customers |
Senior care is the clearest example of a territory sized by something a map does not show. The boundary is ZIP codes or county lines; the size is a count of older residents inside it. Checking that a territory still meets its minimum means joining the boundary to census data, which is not something a spreadsheet of ZIP codes does on its own.
Food and fitness
Six brands grant no territory: McDonald’s, Subway, Dunkin’, Chick-fil-A, Jimmy John’s and Planet Fitness (under its franchise agreement). Where food and fitness brands do protect an area, it is small and circular: about a mile for Domino’s, half a mile to a mile for Jersey Mike’s, one to two miles for Crumbl, up to three miles for Wingstop and Anytime Fitness. Anytime Fitness also caps the circle at 30,000 people. 9Round measures it as driving distance, and Orangetheory draws it street by street on a map.
Territories move
The filings are clear that a territory is not fixed for the life of the agreement.
- Lawn Doctor may redraw a territory after four years if the franchisee’s market share falls below 70% of the system average.
- Labor Finders may cut a territory down to a 20 mile radius around open offices if the development schedule is missed.
- Mathnasium’s protection ends if enrolment drops below a minimum.
- Comfort Keepers franchisees can buy additional ZIP codes, and unassigned ones may be sold to neighbouring franchisees.
- Griswold lets a franchisee expand a territory to 300,000 people for a fee.
Each of those is a change to a boundary on a date. When a customer, a franchisee or a lawyer later asks who owned an address at the time a lead came in, the answer depends on which version of the boundary was in force. A territory list that is edited in place cannot answer that. Territory disputes goes into what that costs.
Every territory has exceptions
The same carve-outs recur across categories:
- National or key accounts. Aire Serv, Rainbow Restoration and Mold Medics reserve large customers to the franchisor, who may assign the work to another franchisee even inside a protected territory.
- Other channels. Online and catalog sales, telemarketing and direct marketing are routinely excluded.
- Other brands. Franchisors keep the right to run different trademarks in the same area, sometimes offering a similar service.
- Captive venues. Hotels, airports, campuses and military bases are carved out of otherwise protected areas.
For routing, every one of these is a rule that sits on top of the boundary: the address is inside the territory, and the lead still goes somewhere else. A system that only answers “which polygon is this in” cannot express it. Franchise territory routing covers how those rules are usually set up.
Method and caveats
We read Item 12 of each brand’s most recent filing we could access, between 2023 and 2026, and recorded how the territory is described and sized. We included only brands where we read the filing text itself. State databases in Wisconsin, California, Minnesota and Indiana publish these documents; several did not allow automated access, so some filings were read from copies of the same documents published elsewhere. Sizes are summarised, and most filings allow exceptions for dense or rural areas that we have not listed. Filings change every year. If anything here is out of date for your brand, tell us and we will correct it.