McDonalds was the same early on, but evolved into a real-estate operation that also sells hamburgers.

Last I knew (this was the 1990s) there were still a few single-store franchisees but most franchisees owned at least half a dozen stores in a market. I also think the investment required to buy a franchise is vastly larger than it was in the beginning. It's really only affordable to owners who can leverage the income they are making from the stores they already own.

AFAIK they do still require owners to be operators. You can't own a McDonalds franchise passively. But I'm not sure that's still the case.