The claim
“Most franchises fail within five years”
Claimed by: Recurring social-media and blog claim, often citing no source
Our verdict
False as stated. The claim conflates franchise unit turnover with business failure and misapplies independent-small-business failure statistics to franchising. Long-run franchise research consistently shows franchised unit continuity rates well above the 50% five-year survival implied by 'most fail' — though survival varies sharply by brand, which is why per-brand diligence matters more than category averages.
The evidence
The figure is typically cited without a source, or traced to small-business (not franchise) survival data
FRANdata's long-run work on true franchise failure rates contradicts the 'most fail' framing
Turnover (ownership transfer) is routinely miscounted as failure in casual analyses
How we checked
Source tracing + review of published franchise-continuity research + definitional analysis (failure vs turnover).
More from Industry myths
SOURCE: FRANCHISEPULSE CLAIM FILE · FREE TO CITE WITH ATTRIBUTION + LINK · SUBMIT CLAIMS VIA THE NEWSLETTER