PanaFranquicias · English
PanaFranquicias is a Panamanian editorial project that documents, brand by brand, which chains operate in the country. A profile is opened when a source shows the brand operating here, and every figure in it carries that source and the date it was read. As of September 28, 2026 the census holds 492 published profiles: 328 directory records and 164 Panamanian company-owned chains. There are 486 profiles with a published unit count; the other 6 document the brand without one, and say so.
The English-language listings we reviewed for this market name brands that offer franchises somewhere in the world and filter them by country. This one works the other way round: it starts from the shop that is open, finds the document that shows it, and records who signed it.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Published profiles | 492 | Published profiles in the census. Each one documents a brand operating in Panama from sources we can read, with the date each source was read. It is not a count of units verified open on the cut-off date. |
| Directory records | 328 | Of those, the profiles that reach Panama through a franchise, license or distribution contract, or whose link is not yet determined |
| Panamanian company-owned chains | 164 | Local chains that run their own stores. They are documented, but they are not franchises |
| Units recorded | 1,638 | Sum of the unit counts published in the directory profiles |
| Source citations | 1,393 | Individual sources cited inside those profiles, each with a consultation date |
| Countries of origin | 34 | Where the brands in the directory come from |
| Profiles with a published unit count | 486 | Profiles that publish a number of units for Panama. The remaining profiles document the brand operating here without a published count, and the field stays empty rather than being estimated. |
The 328 directory records are not the whole census. The other 164 profiles are Panamanian company-owned chains, which belong to a different question: who already runs retail here, not who franchises.
01
What a market of four and a half million people supports, how brands structure entry here, what the franchise filing at DIGERPI involves, and which groups already operate international brands in the country.
Expand to Panama →02
57 brands in the directory publish an open franchise opportunity for Panama. 97 state they are closed to third parties. The rest have published nothing either way, and we say so.
See documented opportunities →03
328 directory records with origin, sector, contractual link, units, provinces and sources. A sample is public; the complete dataset is licensed.
Census and licensing →04
How a brand qualifies for the census, how franchise, license, distribution and company-owned operations are told apart, and what Document Review does and does not mean.
Editorial method →05
Add a brand that is missing, claim an existing profile, or correct a figure with evidence. Corrections are answered in five business days.
List or update a brand →Two products, one dataset. The public website and its navigation index exist so the directory can be browsed. The complete database is licensed.
© PanaFranquicias. This database is proprietary. The downloadable sample is provided solely to show the structure of the dataset. Reproduction, redistribution, commercial use, or access to the complete database requires prior authorization and a separate license from PanaFranquicias.
The Spanish notice at Terms — Spanish is the operative legal text; the paragraph above conveys its meaning in English.
Census and licensingThe 492 brand profiles, the sector hubs, the full methodology and the legal texts are written in Spanish and stay that way. Links that leave English are labelled.
Editorial responsibility: Bautista Quintero, administrative manager and editor. Written and maintained in Panama City. Questions about the data: [email protected].