68.3% of franchise network units are outside the state of the franchisor's headquarters

The CNPJ (Brazilian company registry) records the municipality of each establishment, which makes it possible to compare where a network's units are located with the municipality of the franchisor company. The indicator makes this comparison for the networks measured by the observatory whose headquarters can be reliably identified, and measures the distance between each unit and the headquarters from the center of the two municipalities.

Of the 31,052 active units of these 278 networks, 8.4% are in the headquarters municipality itself and 31.7% in the headquarters state. The remainder, 68.3%, are in other states. The median distance to headquarters is 487 km, 20.0% of units are within 100 km and 74.5% within 1,000 km. In 199 of the 278 networks, more than half of the units are outside the home state.

The share in the headquarters state decreases with network size, from 36.5% in networks with 30 to 99 units to 23.6% in those with 500 or more, and is higher in newer networks, 38.9% in those that opened their third unit from 2015 to 2019, compared with 26.4% in those that opened it by 1999. Among the segments, gyms and sports, with 48.6% of units in the home state, and food, retail and distribution, with 46.7%, stay closest to headquarters, and education, with 27.4%, farthest away. Networks headquartered in the Northeast, the South and the Center-West have 83%, 78% and 75% of units outside the state, compared with 64% for those in the Southeast, where the home-state market is larger.

How we calculate

Each network's headquarters is the municipality of the CNPJ that the network publishes on its website as franchisor, when that establishment is active and has CNAE (national classification of economic activities) class 77.40-3, management of intangible assets, or is a head office with no indication that it belongs to another company in the group. In its absence, we use the network's own establishment in class 77.40-3, when it is a head office and the name does not indicate a unit or a master franchisee. Units are the active establishments that the observatory's census attributes to the network, by the trade name expression and by the CNAE subclasses of the network profile, in the open CNPJ data of Receita Federal (the federal tax authority), reference month October 2026, excluding the headquarters establishment. The distance is the great-circle distance between the municipal centroids published by IBGE (the national statistics institute). Of the 503 networks with 30 or more units, 225 were left out because their headquarters could not be reliably identified; they have size and dispersion similar to those of the networks included.

Calculated on November 8, 2026. Method version 1.0. Sample: 278 networks with an identified headquarters, 31,052 active units.

Frequently asked questions

Do franchise networks grow close to their headquarters?

Mostly not. In the measured networks, 31.7% of units are in the franchisor's state and 68.3% in other states. The share in the home state is higher in small networks and in newer ones.

How far are a franchise network's units from its headquarters?

The median distance between the unit and the franchisor's municipality is 487 km. 20.0% of units are within 100 km and 74.5% within 1,000 km.

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