🏛️ Minnesota Franchise Registrations Scraper

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-05

Minnesota requires franchisors to register with the state before selling any franchise locally. That means the state keeps a public record of every franchisor that has filed or renewed, going back over a decade.

This tool gives you direct access to that registry. Search by brand, franchisor name, year, or document type and get structured records for every filing, each with a direct link to the official PDF on file with the state.

The Minnesota Franchise Registrations Scraper collects franchise filing records from the Minnesota Department of Commerce, including franchisor names, brand names, document types, filing years, file numbers, and direct download links to FDDs, financial statements, and franchise agreements.

✨ What Does It Do

• 🏢 Full Franchise Registry - access every franchisor that has registered or renewed in Minnesota, with legal entity names and brand names
• 📄 Direct FDD Links - get download links to Clean FDDs, Final FDDs, Financial Statements, and Franchise Agreements filed with the state
• 📅 10+ Years of History - retrieve filings going back over a decade to track how franchisors have grown, changed, or exited the market
• 🔢 Official File Numbers - capture the Minnesota file number for each registrant for cross-referencing and compliance work
• 🔍 Flexible Filters - narrow results by franchisor name, brand, document type, year, or file number

🔧 Input

• Max Items - how many records to collect. Free users: up to 100. Paid users: up to 1,000,000
• Document Type - filter by filing type. Clean FDD and Final FDD are the most relevant for investor research. Leave blank for all types
• Franchisor Name - partial match on the legal entity name (e.g. "McDonald" finds "McDonald's USA, LLC")
• Franchise Brand Name - filter by the brand name (e.g. "Subway", "Anytime Fitness")
• Year - filter by filing year (e.g. "2024", "2025"). Defaults to 2025
• File Number - look up a specific Minnesota file number
• Document ID - look up a specific document reference number
• Content Search - search within document content

Example - get all Clean FDDs from 2024:

{
  "documentType": "Clean FDD",
  "year": "2024",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Example - search a specific brand:

{
  "franchisor": "Subway",
  "maxItems": 50
}

📊 Output

Each record includes the following fields. Download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

🏷️ Document ID	🏢 Franchisor	🎯 Franchise name
📄 Document type	📅 Year	🔢 File number
📝 Notes	📬 Received date	➕ Added on
🔗 PDF download link	🗺️ State	🕐 Scraped at

💎 Why Use the Minnesota Franchise Registrations Scraper?

Feature	Our Actor
Official Minnesota Department of Commerce source	✔️
Direct PDF download links to FDDs	✔️
50+ document type filters	✔️
Filter by franchisor, brand, year, or file number	✔️
10+ years of filing history	✔️
No login or authentication required	✔️
Free tier: up to 100 records per run	✔️
Paid tier: up to 1,000,000 records per run	✔️
Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel	✔️

📋 How to Use

1. Sign Up: Create a free account with $5 credit
2. Find the Tool: Search for "Minnesota Franchise Registrations Scraper" in the Apify Store
3. Run It: Set your filters and click Start. Results appear immediately

No coding, no setup, no technical knowledge required.

🎯 Business Use Cases

• ✅ Franchise Investor - pull all current Clean FDD filings to get the official disclosure documents before committing capital to any franchise opportunity. The PDF link gives you the complete document in one click
• 📊 Franchise Broker - build and refresh a current list of all franchisors registered in Minnesota. Filter by year to track new entrants and renewal activity across your target market
• 🔍 Due Diligence Analyst - search by franchisor name to pull every filing they have ever submitted, including amendments, financial statements, and registration orders, going back over a decade

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
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• 🅒 Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to run this actor?

No. You can start right now on the free Apify plan, which includes $5 in free monthly credit. That is enough to run this actor several times and explore the output before committing to anything. Paid plans unlock higher limits, more concurrent runs, and larger datasets. Create a free Apify account here to get started.

🚨 What happens if my run fails or returns no results?

Failed runs are not charged. If the source site changes, proxies get rate-limited, or a specific input matches nothing, re-run the actor or open our contact form and we will investigate. You can also check the run log in the Apify console to see why the run stopped.

📏 How many items can I scrape per run?

Free users are limited to 10 items per run so you can preview the output and confirm the actor works for your use case. Paid users can raise maxItems up to 1,000,000 per run. Upgrade here if you need full scale.

🕒 How fresh is the data?

Every run fetches live data at the moment of execution. There is no cache or delay: the records you get reflect what the source returned at that moment. Schedule the actor to maintain a rolling snapshot of the data you need.

🧑‍💻 Can I call this actor from my own code?

Yes. Apify exposes every actor as a REST endpoint and ships first-class SDKs for Node.js and Python. You can start a run, read the dataset, and handle webhooks from your own app in a few lines. All you need is your Apify API token.

📤 How do I export the data?

Every Apify dataset can be downloaded in one click from the console as CSV, JSON, JSONL, Excel, HTML, XML, or RSS. You can also pull results programmatically via the Apify API or stream them into BigQuery, S3, and other destinations through built-in integrations.

📅 Can I schedule the actor to run automatically?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run the actor on any cadence, from hourly to monthly. Results are saved to your dataset and can be delivered to webhooks, email, Slack, cloud storage, or automation tools such as Zapier and Make.

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🔗 Integrate with Any App

• Make - automate workflows
• Zapier - connect 5000+ apps
• Slack - get notifications
• Google Drive - export to spreadsheets
• Airbyte - data pipelines

🤝 More ParseForge Actors

• Franchise Direct Scraper - extract franchise opportunities listed on FranchiseDirect with investment ranges, fees, and franchisor details
• FINRA BrokerCheck Scraper - pull broker and firm registration data from FINRA's public database for financial due diligence
• BizBuySell Scraper - collect business-for-sale listings including asking price, revenue, cash flow, and industry

🚀 Ready to Start?

Create a free account with $5 credit and collect your first 100 results for free. No coding, no setup.

🆘 Need Help?

• Check the FAQ section above for common questions
• Visit the Apify support page for documentation and tutorials
• Contact us to request a new scraper, propose a custom project, or report an issue at Tally contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Commerce or any government agency. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.