What a Home Service Franchise Really Costs in Canada

The franchise fee is the licence. It buys the right to operate under the brand in a defined territory, the training programme, and access to the systems.

The total investment is what it takes to get open and trade until the business supports itself. Here is the shape of it:

The range of $105,520 to $213,824 is wide for a reason. It moves with how aggressively you market at launch, whether you already own a suitable vehicle, what office space costs where you are, and how fast you intend to scale.

The full detail sits in the Franchise Disclosure Document, which you receive at least 14 days before anything is signed.

Nine percent of gross sales, split three ways:

Royalty — 6%. The system, ongoing support, weekly operational calls, monthly financial reviews, field visits and access to the franchisee network.

Marketing fund — 2%. Brand-level marketing. Worth being precise here, because buyers consistently get this wrong: roughly 25% of your marketing comes from corporate, and about 75% is driven locally by you. Anyone who tells you head office will fill your calendar is setting you up for disappointment, and how that split works in practice is worth understanding before you sign anything.

Technology — 1%. The CRM, scheduling and dispatch, mobile tools for craftsmen, payment processing and reputation management.

This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that decides whether the maths works.

Nine percent of gross sales is a meaningful number. What determines whether you can carry it is everything else in your cost structure — and a home service model built on independent contractors carries almost nothing.

No fleet. Craftsmen use their own vehicles. A wrapped vehicle is a brand standard for the owner, and it doubles as advertising, but you are not financing a fleet.

No tools or equipment. Craftsmen bring their own. There is no capital equipment line.

No inventory. Materials are bought per job, not stocked. Nothing sits on a shelf depreciating.

No storefront. A modest office, not a retail location. Nothing flashy. Customers do not visit you; you go to them.

Minimal payroll. You and a customer service representative to start. The people doing the work are independent contractors paid per job — a structure with economics of its own that are worth understanding properly.

Compare that to a food franchise, where build-out alone can exceed this entire investment, before you have bought a single ingredient or hired a single shift.

The practical consequence is your break-even point. A business with low fixed costs can absorb a bad month. A business with a lease, a fleet, staff and inventory cannot. That difference is invisible on a fee schedule and decisive in a downturn.

On a typical job, revenue divides three ways:

Forty-seven percent to the contractor sounds high until you count what you are not paying: no payroll taxes, no benefits, no workers’ compensation on employees, no idle time between jobs, no vehicles, no tools.

Average revenue across Canadian franchisees is around $600,000 a year. The top performer, in Ottawa, runs about $1.7 million. A part-time or secondary operation might sit around $100,000.

Net margin runs roughly 10% to 35%. That is a wide spread, and the spread is the interesting part — it is driven by how well the office is run rather than by the market it sits in, which is the subject of what franchise owners actually take home.

Three routes into the same category:

Going independent is genuinely cheaper upfront. What it costs you is time and error — and the independent route has numbers of its own that are worth comparing honestly.

The Canada Small Business Financing Program has covered franchise fees as an eligible intangible asset since the 2022 modernisation — a detail many lenders still do not mention unprompted. The program caps intangible assets and working capital at $150,000 within a larger $1.15 million ceiling.

Franchises also tend to be easier to finance than independent start-ups, because the lender can look at an established system’s track record rather than a single untested plan. Both the financing routes available in Canada and how much of the total has to be your own money are covered separately.

1. What is in the total investment range, and what is not?
2. What does the working capital allowance actually assume about revenue in months one to three?
3. What is the split between corporate and local marketing spend?
4. What ongoing costs sit outside the fee schedule — insurance, vehicle, office, software?
5. What is the fixed cost base once I am running? This is the question almost nobody asks and it matters more than the fee.

The full investment breakdown sets out what sits in each line.