What is Item 20 of the FDD?
Item 20 is the FDD's unit-history section: tables showing, for the past three years, how many outlets opened, closed, transferred, were terminated, or were reacquired, state by state — plus lists of current and former franchisees with contact information. It is the closest thing to ground truth in the document, and those contact lists are your source for independent validation calls.
Watch two patterns: exits outpacing openings (a shrinking system someone is still selling into), and heavy "reacquired by franchisor" counts (units the company had to take back). We chart every brand's disclosed unit history on its profile and recompute a 3-year survival metric from it — the raw retention field many portals reprint is corrupt, so we publish our method instead.