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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

How do they “not worry about rent”? The local franchise pays rent to the parent company.

I think their point is that most McDonald's franchisees in the U.S. don't need to be concerned about sudden, drastic rent increases because they aren't beholden to a third-party commercial landlord - McDonald's is their landlord, and thus is unlikely to boot them out just to lease the space at a higher rate to e.g. Burger King.

That's interesting, and suggested by the movie. However I wonder how that works in Europe for inner city locations. Here in Germany both in large and small cities, I can't recall any that I can imagine being owned by McDonald's.

> I wonder how that works in Europe for inner city locations

I don't have any specific insight into the EU, but in the other global markets I'm familiar with (mostly China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan) locations are either owned by McDonald's directly or franchised by large corporations that have significant bargaining power with (and sometimes are) landlords.

The China/HK franchise, for example, is operated by CITIC (a Chinese SOE) and Carlyle.

Yes, but the McDonald's Corporation has a vested interest in making sure that the rent is affordable for running a McDonald's franchise on. MDC isn't going to spike the rent to force a franchisee out of business in the hopes that somebody else comes along willing to pay the rent spike.

I have to point out that many if not most franchisees most own or lease the property independently of the parent company. Some parent companies own the property but most don't.

In the US, McDonalds Corporation owns all the land, and overall they own an incredible amount of the land and the buildings:

"The company owns about 45% of the land and 70% of the buildings at their 36,000+ locations (the rest is leased)."[1]

This article is from 2015, but I don't have any info that disputes it.

[1]https://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-bey...

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