In a “daily rally call” last year following reports of problems in the Dickey’s system, the barbecue franchise’s CEO, Laura Rea Dickey, said that the company looked forward to the publication of its franchise disclosure document, or FDD, in September.
The FDD is a comprehensive document on a franchise system and all franchises are required to have one if they are to sell franchises. The numbers in that FDD are audited, Dickey said, and should show the brand is growing.
“We’ll be able to quote an increased store count when it comes to the FDD,” Dickey said, according to the presentation.
Yet Dickey’s has not renewed its FDD in several states that require franchises to register before they sell to prospective investors. That includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, Indiana, Illinois and Delaware, according to officials in those states or postings on the states’ websites.
By allowing its franchise registration to expire, Dickey’s will not be able to sell new franchises in those states.
“When you see the registrations expiring in a substantial number or even all the registration states, it’s a real sign that this system isn’t even going to be trying to sell new stores,” said Caroline Bundy Fichter, attorney out of Seattle with Bundy & Fichter. She was speaking generally about registration requirements.
Dickey’s is still selling franchises, however, using social media. One such ad on the social media site Facebook, dated Dec. 10, 2025, after the registration expirations, boasts about the chain’s "eight revenue streams” and “desirable markets available.”
Screenshot/Facebook
How many locations the chain currently operates is not clear. The company’s website says there are 376 locations. Its location finder, however, lists 289 locations. At least two of those locations are “coming soon.” Searches on Google and Yelp show at least 17 locations as “closed,” at least temporarily or permanently. Another 15 could not be independently verified.
We emailed Dickey’s for comment on the registration issue and the discrepancy in location count.
Jeff Gruber, SVP of franchise relations for Dickey’s, responded by saying that it has 289 domestic locations, the number listed on the directory. He also cited 31 international locations, and the chain does indeed have locations in places like Canada and Dubai. He also cited three “coming soon” units.
Gruber also cited another 34 domestic non-traditional locations and 20 “domestic non-traditional international locations,” giving Dickey’s 377 restaurants. The locations of those non-traditional units could not be verified, though Dickey’s locations in Dallas airports can be found on the directory that we examined.
Dickey’s in October announced the opening of 28 locations in “ghost kitchens” in several states, but it’s not clear exactly who operates those ghost kitchens and, again, they could not be independently verified.
Gruber did not address the issue with franchise registrations. Nor did he or other company executives provide the FDD when we requested a copy.
He then accused this author of being a “corrupt reporter” who focuses “primarily on hit pieces” and is part of a “civil conspiracy” taken part by an “anti-franchise social media group.”
Regardless, Dickey’s unit count continues to shrink. Based on Gruber’s count, the company has 323 locations in the U.S., which would be down from the 366 locations the chain operated in 2024, the last time the company’s data was available.
Dickey’s peaked at 564 restaurants in 2017 and the company’s unit count has declined almost every year since then, according to data from FDDs and Restaurant Business sister company Technomic.
Restaurant Business in 2024 detailed challenges franchisees in the Dickey’s system have had in recent years with cost overruns on new store openings, high costs for food and supplies, frequent discounts and pricing limits. Multiple other publications have since detailed similar accounts, including the New York Times last year.
The company has faced lawsuits from franchisees over the company’s franchising practices over the years. But disputes are typically settled in arbitration, which the company requires in its franchise agreement. One of those instances was made public in a legal dispute last year.
In October, for instance, a Chicago-area franchisee, G Six Consulting, sued Dickey’s seeking to force the company to pay a $700,000 judgement awarded by an arbitrator the previous August. G Six closed its store in 2023, just three months after opening, after the cost to open overran Dickey’s projections in the FDD. The arbitrator found that Dickey’s violated Illinois law by having no basis for the cost disclosures in the document.
The arbitration dispute was made public last year when Dickey’s unsuccessfully sought a restraining order against the arbitrator, arguing that he overstepped his bounds by not allowing Dickey’s to provide witness testimony, according to court documents. Those sanctions came after the company defied an arbitrator’s orders to have its executives give testimony.
Dickey’s is asking a federal court to vacate the award, citing many of the same issues.
With its registration expired, Dickey’s can still sell franchises in the 37 states that do not require registration. It could also change its business model to, for instance, sell only to large, multi-unit franchisees, Bundy Fichter said. Some states don’t require registration if franchises only sell to accredited investors, she said.
The FDD is a large document that is designed to provide all the information about a brand to prospective operators.
But registration states can make such documents public, which opens the brands to more scrutiny. “People will look at the FDD every year to keep track of store count and sales,” Bundy Fichter said.
Bundy Fichter said some franchisors starting out will sometimes franchise only in non-registration states before expanding to the others when they have a better story to tell. But it’s also not common for well-known brands to pull back from registration states. “We put that in a red flag bucket,” she said. “For a well-known national brand to suddenly pull out of all registration states is concerning.”
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