A franchise is not a business you own; it is a license to operate someone else's system under conditions you agree to in advance and cannot change. This article explains what a franchise agreement actually commits a buyer to, starting with the disclosure document nobody reads properly and the one item in it that matters most. It walks through the real economics — the initial fee, the royalty, the advertising fund, the required supply chain, and the build-out — and shows with worked numbers why a franchise that looks profitable at the unit level can fail at the owner level. It then covers the clauses that decide the outcome: territory and encroachment, approved suppliers and rebates, transfer conditions, renewal on the then-current agreement, termination and cure, and the post-term non-compete that can shut a former franchisee out of the only trade they know. Federal overlays on trademark, antitrust tying, wage-hour, and joint employment are covered because they change the leverage. Practical sections explain the due diligence that actually predicts outcomes and the three ways franchisees exit. Every authority is linked to its text.