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Comment by ericbarrett | Hacker News Reader

What about franchise fees? Independent fast food restaurants basically don’t exist in the U.S. anymore. An individual McDonalds may be scraping the boundary of profitability, but corporate had a net income of $1.5B last quarter[0], or about $7,500 per employee per quarter[1]. That’s net income, not revenue.

[0] https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/gwscorp/assets/i...

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/numb...

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Dicks, Burgerville (mostly unionized), Burgermaster, In N Out and other regional chains exist, along with a plethora of single location independent fast food restaurants.

All those regional chains you mentioned pay significantly better than McDonalds, YUM, etc. as well.

Yes, the point of most franchised chains is to extract wealth from communities rather than invest in a stable, skilled workforce delivering a good product.

McDonalds, YUM Brands, et all charge large franchise fees and force use of particular vendors and business practices to ensure they extract as much income as possible from their franchisees.

Then we are in agreement!

~200,000 is number directly employed by McDonalds. They have 5-10% of stores. There doesn't seem to be a current accurate number for total including franchisees - but seems to be in the 1.5 - 2 million range.

I feel like there's never been more independent (or local chain) burger joints, food trucks, and just fast food in general.

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