The Validation Call Script Franchisors Hope You Never Use
Item 20 hands you every owner's phone number, including the ones who left. Here is exactly what to ask them.
9 min
Aug 13, 2026 · Updated Sep 14, 2026 · By the Fine Print desk
You already know you should talk to franchise owners before you buy. The salesperson knows it too, which is why they would love to pick which ones.
What should you ask franchise owners before buying? The questions matter less than the call list.
Item 20 of every Franchise Disclosure Document legally hands you the name and phone number of every current franchisee, plus the owners who recently left. The FTC's advice is to "reach out to as many of them as possible."
Most buyers never use it. They call the three to five happy owners the salesperson suggests. Those hand-picked cheerleaders even have an industry nickname, songbirds.
This article gives you the full validation call script, the sampling method that defeats steering, and the questions that surface what the sales process is built to hide. Including one question the owner may be contractually unable to answer.
The List Is the Loophole
Franchisors control almost every input in your buying journey, the brochure, the discovery day, the earnings conversation. The one thing federal law takes out of their hands is the contact list. Under the FTC's Franchise Rule, the FDD must disclose all current franchisees with outlet addresses and phone numbers, and franchisees who left the system during the last fiscal year with their contact information.
That second group is the gold. The FTC's Consumer's Guide calls talking to current and former franchisees "the most reliable way to verify the franchisor's claims," and specifically warns that "some franchisors may give you a separate reference list of franchisees to contact." A curated reference list is not against the rules. Limiting your calls to it is how buyers get songbirded.
One more Item 20 secret almost nobody uses. The rule requires franchisors to disclose whether franchisees signed confidentiality provisions restricting their ability to talk to you, and permits disclosure of how many signed such gag clauses in the last three years. The FTC's 2024 franchising report, built from thousands of public comments, found the silence is real, with about a quarter of comments filed anonymously and franchisees writing things like "I am writing this anonymously, because I am afraid of retaliation." Count the gag clauses before you dial, because they tell you how much the system trusts its own owners with a phone.
The Sampling Method That Defeats Steering
Do not let anyone pick your calls for you. Work Item 20 like a researcher:
Pull names yourself from the current-franchisee list. Ignore the offered reference list until the end, then call those too, as the FTC suggests, so you can compare the curated sample to your random one.
Stratify. Pick owners across three tenure bands, opened about one year ago, three to five years ago, and longtime operators, and across markets unlike each other, urban and rural, strong and weak territories. The FTC's guide specifically recommends talking to several one-year owners and several five-year owners.
Oversample. Owners are busy and some will not call back. No reliable published callback rate exists, so plan on contacting two to three times more people than the conversations you want. Veteran franchise adviser Joel Libava recommends completing 10 to 15 conversations. The broker network FranChoice, no enemy of franchising, suggests gathering information on 20 to 30 franchisees across 10 to 20 hours of calls.
Call the leavers. The former-franchisee list covers roughly the last fiscal year of departures, so it ages fast. If you can get the prior year's FDD as well, you double your pool of people with no remaining reason to perform.
If a franchisor discourages you from calling anyone beyond the provided list, write that down. It is not illegal. It is an answer.
The Validation Call Script
Open by asking permission and disarming the performance: "I'm doing my homework before buying into the system. Nothing you say goes back to corporate from me. Do you have 20 minutes?"
Money, asked legally and usefully. Never ask "how much do you make" as if someone can promise your results. Ask what happened to them:
What did you actually spend to open, compared to the Item 7 estimate in the FDD? The FTC's 2024 report quotes an owner whose build-out was pitched at $270,000 to $350,000 and "totaled $535,000," and another commenter saying Dickey's franchisees were told costs of $400,000 that sometimes doubled. Overruns are common enough that the FTC's own guide tells you to ask about total investment.
How long did it take to break even? The FTC's guide lists this question explicitly.
Which recurring costs surprised you, and are you satisfied with what you're required to buy from mandatory suppliers? Also straight from the FTC's question list.
Find Out What the Franchise Is Not Telling You
Every week we take one famous franchise brand's FDD apart and show the real costs, the fees that show up later, the exit traps, and how many owners walked away. The people who sell franchises hate it.
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Workload. 4. What does a typical week look like, hours in the building versus back office? 5. What did you expect the job to be, and what is it actually?
Support. 6. How was training and opening support, honestly? 7. When something breaks, how fast does the franchisor respond? 8. Has support gotten better or worse since you signed?
System health. 9. Would you buy this franchise again at today's fees? 10. Have you ever considered selling, and what happened when you looked into it? 11. Is there a franchisee association, and is it independent or franchisor-sponsored? Franchisors must disclose sponsored associations in Item 20, and independent associations can request inclusion in the FDD. The existence, or suspicious absence, of an independent association is a system-health signal by itself.
The two questions nobody asks. 12. Are you free to speak candidly with me, or did you sign a confidentiality provision that limits what you can say? A yes is not a scandal, but three yeses in a row tells you why every call sounds the same. 13. For former franchisees: why did you leave, and what would have changed your mind? The FTC recommends reaching as many previous owners of failed outlets as possible.
Take notes during every call. Patterns across ten calls are evidence. One glowing call is a testimonial.
How to Read the Answers
Songbird calls sound like marketing, with specific joy and vague numbers. Real calls sound like operations, with specific numbers and mixed feelings. A healthy system produces owners who complain about real things, food costs, staffing, a botched software rollout, and still say they would buy again. A sick system produces either fear, short calls, "I'd rather not say," or uniform five-star enthusiasm from every name the salesperson gave you.
Cross-check what you hear against paper. Cost overrun stories should send you back to Item 7. Churn complaints should send you to Item 20's turnover tables, where the FTC warns that franchisors sometimes buy back failed outlets and relist them as company-owned, softening the numbers. Anything about lawsuits sends you to Item 3. And remember the one legal bright line from the seller's side: under the Franchise Rule, any claim about sales, income, or profits must appear in Item 19 of the FDD. If a salesperson whispers numbers that are not in Item 19, that whisper is itself the red flag.
Who This Process Is For
First-time buyers get the most from the full 10 to 15 call protocol, because they have no industry baseline to compare claims against. Experienced operators buying a second brand can lean harder on the former-franchisee calls and the association question, which surface system politics fast. Resale buyers should run the same script and add the seller's own unit economics, since they are buying a specific store's history, not a territory map. In every case the method is identical: you choose the sample, not the seller.
FAQ
What questions should I ask franchise owners before buying?
Ask about their actual numbers and their actual weeks. What they spent to open versus the Item 7 estimate, how long they took to break even, which costs surprised them, satisfaction with mandatory suppliers, hours worked in a typical week, quality of training and support, whether an independent franchisee association exists, whether they would buy again at today's fees, and whether a confidentiality clause limits what they can tell you. The FTC's Consumer's Guide endorses the cost, break-even, and satisfaction questions directly.
How many franchisees should I call before buying a franchise?
More than feels polite. The FTC says to reach out to as many as possible. Adviser Joel Libava recommends 10 to 15 completed conversations, and broker network FranChoice suggests building a picture of 20 to 30 owners across 10 to 20 hours. The three to five calls many sales processes suggest is a sample size designed to be survivable, not informative. Plan to contact two to three times more owners than the conversations you need, because many will not respond.
What is a validation call in franchising?
It is the stage where a prospective buyer interviews existing franchisees about their experience before signing. Sales teams treat validation as a step they manage, often supplying a short list of owners to call. Treated properly, it is independent research you control, sampling owners you selected from Item 20 of the FDD, including people who left the system.
What is FDD Item 20 and why does it matter?
Item 20 is the FDD section containing system statistics and contact lists. It discloses three years of outlet openings, closings, terminations, and transfers, all current franchisees with phone numbers, franchisees who left during the last fiscal year with contact information, any franchisor-sponsored franchisee associations, and whether franchisees signed confidentiality provisions. It exists precisely so buyers are not limited to references the seller chooses.
Can I talk to former franchisees, and how do I find them?
Yes. The FDD must list franchisees who left the system during the most recent fiscal year, with their contact information, and the FTC recommends contacting as many previous owners as possible. Because the list only covers about a year of departures, asking the franchisor for last year's FDD as well roughly doubles your pool of former owners. People with no ongoing stake in the brand give the least performed answers you will hear.
What are songbirds in franchise sales?
Songbirds are the franchisees a sales team routinely steers prospects toward because they reliably give glowing reviews. The term comes from inside franchise sales culture. The defense is sampling: pick your own names from Item 20, stratify by tenure and market, and treat the offered reference list as one data source to compare against your random sample rather than the whole survey.
Can a franchisor stop me from contacting franchisees on my own?
The Franchise Rule forces disclosure of the full contact list, which exists so you can call anyone on it. What can limit a conversation is the franchisee's side, confidentiality provisions some owners sign, which Item 20 must disclose. Separately, the FTC warned in July 2024 that using contract clauses to stop franchisees from reporting violations to the government is unlawful. If a franchisor actively discourages off-list calls, treat that behavior as diligence data.
Should I ask franchisees how much money they make?
Ask about their costs, their break-even timeline, and their hours rather than requesting income promises. Under the Franchise Rule, official financial performance claims by the seller belong in Item 19 of the FDD, and the FTC's guide frames franchisee conversations around total investment, break-even, and satisfaction. Owners sharing their own experience are giving you data points, not projections. Collect many, and never treat any single answer as your forecast.
The Bottom Line
Franchisors do not fear your questions. Every salesperson has heard them all. They fear your call list, because Item 20 gives you the entire roster and the recent leavers, and ten self-selected calls beat fifty curated ones. Pull the list, stratify the sample, run the script, count the gag clauses, and let the pattern, not the performance, make your decision.
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Find Out What the Franchise Is Not Telling You
Every week we take one famous franchise brand's FDD apart and show the real costs, the fees that show up later, the exit traps, and how many owners walked away. The people who sell franchises hate it.
