Little Diggers Franchise Cost, and the Independent Path
The Little Diggers franchise cost is $216,600 to $482,150 to open, including a $50,000 franchise fee, plus about 11% of sales for as long as you own it. If you are weighing that against building your own, you are asking exactly the right question. We asked it too, and here is everything we found.
Key Takeaways
- Disclosed cost to open: $216,600 to $482,150, including a $50,000 franchise fee.
- Ongoing: an 8% royalty, a 2% ad fund that can rise to 4%, and 1% in local spend.
- The royalty has a $500 weekly minimum, or $26,000 a year, earned or not. This is the line most write-ups miss.
- Their Dublin, Ohio location disclosed $434,994 in 2024 sales at 25.85% EBITDA. This concept genuinely works.
- Building independently runs about $150,000 to $300,000 with no fee and no royalty.
- Over ten years at $435,000 in sales, the fees come to roughly $528,000.
- We are not affiliated with Little Diggers. Every number here is from their public Franchise Disclosure Document.
How much is a Little Diggers franchise?
Good news for anyone doing this research: every franchisor in the United States must publish a Franchise Disclosure Document, so these are real filed numbers rather than marketing. Here is what they disclose for one location in a 3,900 to 4,100 square foot space.
| Line item | Disclosed range |
|---|---|
| Initial franchise fee | $50,000 |
| Leasehold improvements | $75,000 – $262,000 |
| Sand purchase and installation | $17,500 – $24,000 |
| Furniture, fixtures, equipment | $19,000 – $24,500 |
| Architect | $4,500 – $21,500 |
| Signage, interior and exterior | $7,500 – $14,000 |
| Sandbox toy start-up package | $3,500 – $7,500 |
| Lease security deposits | $6,000 – $10,500 |
| Point of sale system | $2,275 – $3,000 |
| Initial insurance | $750 – $1,500 |
| Grand opening marketing (required minimum) | $1,500 – $3,000 |
| Three months operating reserve | $15,000 – $30,000 |
| Total to open | $216,600 – $482,150 |
Two notes worth having before you compare anything. Their rent assumption of $6,000 to $10,500 a month reflects a much larger room than a lean independent needs. And the three-month operating reserve is on the light side for this category — our own first year suggests you will be happier with twelve to eighteen months behind you.
What are the ongoing fees?
The opening cost is what everyone compares. The ongoing fees are what actually shape your decade.
- Royalty: 8% of net sales, with a minimum of $500 per week.
- Advertising fund: 2% of net sales, which the franchisor may raise to 4%.
- Required local advertising: 1% on top of the fund.
- Renewal fee: $10,000 when your term comes up.
- Transfer fee: up to $5,000 if you ever sell.
That is roughly 11% off the top, permanently. Against their own disclosed Dublin sales of $434,994, it works out near $47,800 a year. Across a ten-year term the royalty and fund alone reach about $478,000, and with the initial fee the total passes $528,000.
None of that is hidden or unfair — 11% sits within the normal band for franchising, and they disclose it properly. The useful question is not whether the fee is reasonable. It is what you get for it, and whether you could buy the same thing once instead of renting it forever.
The minimum royalty, and who it affects
This is the detail we most want you to notice, because it rarely appears in comparisons and it matters more than the headline percentage.
The royalty is 8% of net sales or $500 a week, whichever is greater. That floor comes to $26,000 a year regardless of how your year went.
For a location doing $435,000 it never binds — 8% is $34,800, comfortably above. But run it against a smaller or slower room and it inverts. Our own first calendar year brought in $98,143. A $26,000 minimum against that is about 26% of everything through the door, on top of the ad fund, the rent, and a monthly nut already running $9,000 to $11,000.
To be fair about it: minimum royalties are standard practice, and a well-funded location in a busy market may never touch it. But a first-year room in a quieter market will, and that is the year the extra $26,000 is hardest to find.
What their locations earn
Little Diggers discloses financial performance for two company-owned locations, which is more openness than many franchisors offer and deserves credit.
Dublin, Ohio, full year 2024: net sales $434,994, cost of goods sold $34,858, occupancy $101,073, payroll $109,735, and EBITDA $112,483 — 25.85% of sales.
Cleveland, Ohio opened mid-November 2024 and averaged roughly $76,648 a month across its first six weeks. Grand-opening excitement and the holidays inflate that, so do not read it as a run rate.
In the first quarter of 2025, Dublin did $158,579 and Cleveland $176,791 — about $52,860 and $58,930 a month.
Take the encouraging lesson here, because it is the real one: a mature, full-size sand playground in a good market is a genuinely good business. Four hundred thousand a year at 25% EBITDA is a life. The concept is not in doubt.
What those numbers cannot tell you is how much came from the franchise system and how much came from square footage, long hours, strong capitalization, and being company-owned locations in the franchisor’s home market. Those are big variables, and a franchisee elsewhere does not automatically inherit them.
What building your own costs instead
We opened The Sand Place in Aurora, Colorado in January 2025 without a franchise. All-in for a lean independent location runs about $150,000 to $300,000, and the biggest variable is the same one on their sheet: your buildout.
The physical costs do not change much either way. Sand is $17,000 to $25,000 whichever path you take, because sand costs what sand costs. Toys, fixtures, signage, and a booking system land in similar ranges. Rent depends on your town, not your business model.
What you avoid is the $50,000 and the 11%. What you take on is building the playbook yourself, which is real work and took us a year. We will not pretend otherwise.
And in the interest of showing our whole hand: our first calendar year earned $98,143 against $168,161 in costs. Independent is cheaper. It is not faster, and it is not easier. We still think it was the right call, and we would make it again.
The part a franchise really is selling you: the sand
Here is the thing we understand better now than we did at the start.
When you buy a sand-play franchise, you are mostly not buying brand recognition — few families have heard of any of these names yet. You are buying the answers to the sand questions, and those answers are genuinely hard to find, because sand play is a specialty. Most advice for play spaces is written for soft-play rooms and play cafes, where sand simply does not exist.
The questions worth paying someone for are these:
- Which grade of silica-free sand, and how many tons for your specific floor area and depth?
- Who actually delivers and installs it in your state, and what does the logistics look like?
- How do you clean a whole floor of sand every night, including weekends and holidays?
- How do you keep dust down and stop sand walking out of the building?
- What does sand depth do to floor loading, and what does a big open sand room cost to heat and cool?
- How often does sand need topping up or replacing, and at what cost?
- What do you say to the parent who asks about silica on your first Saturday?
A franchise answers those for you, and that is worth real money. Our view is simply that it is worth paying for once, not as a percentage of your sales for a decade. Our own answer to the silica question is public, in our guide to playground sand safety, types, and risks.
Get the sand answers without the royalty
We run an independent sand playground and we deal with all of the above every single day. If you would rather buy that knowledge once than rent it forever, that is exactly what we offer.
- Feasibility review, $500 – a 90-minute session on your town and your space, plus a written go or no-go memo you can show a bank.
- Launch package, $5,000 – six working sessions across 90 days: site selection, your cash forecast, sand specification and supplier introductions, floor plan, opening documents, booking setup, and your first eight weeks of marketing.
- No royalty, no ad fund, no renewal fee – your name, your brand, and nothing owed to us once we are done.
Which path suits which person
Neither answer is right for everyone, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
A franchise is likely a good fit if
- You are well capitalized and can fund $400,000 or more without strain.
- You would rather execute a proven system than design one, and you value your time over the fee.
- You want support on speed dial from day one.
- Your market is big enough that the minimum royalty will never bind.
Independent is likely a good fit if
- Your capital is tighter and $50,000 would be better spent on your room.
- You want to keep the 11% and build equity in a name that is yours.
- You are in a smaller or quieter market where a $26,000 royalty floor would hurt.
- You have your own ideas about theme, pricing, hours, and who you partner with locally.
We chose independent, and we are glad we did. We also spent a year building things a franchisee would have been handed on day one — which is honestly why this site exists. If you want the middle path, that is what our help for independent sand play businesses is: the playbook, once, with nothing owed afterward.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a Little Diggers franchise cost?
Their disclosed total investment to open one location is $216,600 to $482,150, including a $50,000 initial franchise fee. Ongoing fees are an 8% royalty on net sales with a $500 weekly minimum, a 2% advertising fund that can rise to 4%, and 1% in required local advertising spend.
What are the ongoing Little Diggers franchise fees?
An 8% royalty on net sales with a $500 per week minimum, plus a 2% advertising fund the franchisor can raise to 4%, plus 1% in required local spend. Renewal costs $10,000 and transferring costs up to $5,000. Together that is roughly 11% of sales, permanently.
How much does a Little Diggers location make?
Their disclosed company-owned location in Dublin, Ohio did $434,994 in net sales for full-year 2024, with EBITDA of $112,483, or 25.85% of sales. A second location opened in Cleveland in mid-November 2024. In the first quarter of 2025 the two did $158,579 and $176,791.
Is it cheaper to open an indoor sand playground independently?
Yes, on cost. A lean independent location runs about $150,000 to $300,000 all-in, with no franchise fee and no royalty. What you take on instead is building the operating playbook, sourcing your own sand supplier, and growing a name from scratch. Cheaper is not the same as easier.
What is a minimum royalty and why does it matter?
It is a floor beneath the percentage. Here the royalty is 8% of net sales or $500 per week, whichever is greater, so $26,000 a year is owed regardless of performance. A large location never notices it. A smaller or first-year location can find it taking about a quarter of total revenue.
Are you affiliated with Little Diggers?
No. The Sand Place is an independent indoor sand playground in Aurora, Colorado, with no affiliation, endorsement, or business relationship with Little Diggers. Every figure here comes from their publicly filed Franchise Disclosure Document. Please verify the current version before making any decision.
Whichever you choose, check the current numbers
Franchise disclosure documents are reissued every year, so treat these Little Diggers franchise cost figures as a starting point rather than gospel. Request the current FDD from the franchisor, read Items 5 through 7 for fees and investment and Item 19 for performance, and have a franchise attorney read the agreement with you. The SBA’s guide to launching a business is a good companion for everything else.
And if you want to talk the independent path through with people who took it, we would be glad to. We are at 16677 E. Smoky Hill Rd., Aurora, CO 80015.