The 2025 FDD, Franchise Agreement and Area Development Agreement
2025 Issue 3 | GearedUp
In late June, Planet Fitness Club Support Center( PFCSC) finished updating its Franchise Disclosure Document( FDD) and the accompanying standard forms of Franchise Agreement( FA) and Area Development Agreement( ADA). Now that the annual process of updating those documents is complete, I wanted to take the opportunity to write this article to:( i) explain the process PFCSC used to update the FDD, FA and ADA this year; and( ii) identify some of the key changes included in the 2025 FDD, FA and ADA.
The Process for Updating the FDD
Each year, federal law( and state law in many places) requires franchisors to update their FDDs within 120 days of the close of the franchisor’ s fiscal year to continue selling franchises. In connection with updating the FDD, most franchisors also take the opportunity to update their standard forms of franchise agreement and area development agreement.
Franchisors are not required to involve their franchisees in this process, and many franchisors simply revise their documents without any input from franchisees. Fortunately for Planet Fitness ® franchisees, PFCSC has tended to involve the PFIFC in the process of updating its FDD, FA and ADA. While this involvement does not guarantee a set of by J. Mark Dady changes the IFC fully endorses, it does, at a minimum, ensure PFCSC understands how franchisees are likely to react to a proposed change, and at best, allows for significant improvement to the final terms of the agreements.
In most years, PFCSC begins this process by providing the PFIFC with an“ Executive Summary,” identifying certain key changes PFCSC proposes to make to the ADA and FA, followed by extensive back and forth between PFCSC and the PFIFC. Given the number of changes occurring in PFCSC’ s C-suite, this
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