The Easy Way to Own a McDonald's Franchise
Ever dream of owning your own McDonald’s franchise? Unless you’ve got more than a million bucks stashed under your mattress, it’s probably just that – a dream. It can cost nearly $2 million to open a Golden Arches franchise, depending on the location and construction design. But there’s an easier way to get a piece of the McPie. For instance, you can now invest in the world’s largest McDonald’s franchisee, which just went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Arcos Dorados — Spanish for Golden Arches — controls 1,755 restaurants in 19 countries and territories, including almost every location in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Argentina-based franchisee, which generates about 5 percent of all McDonald’s sales, is currently valued at $4.5 billion. So even though you’ll probably never have your own McDonald’s franchise, for $23 per share you can sort of feel like you do.
The Subway diet. Subway has always positioned itself as the “healthy” fast-food alternative. It’s a pitch that has played well with an increasingly health-conscious consumer base and has vaulted the sandwich franchise past McDonald’s as the world’s largest restaurant chain. And now, with more pressure than ever in our society to stamp out obesity and heart disease, Subway is rising to the challenge. At least in its own way. The company plans to reduce the salt content of it sandwiches by anywhere from 15 percent to 28 percent. Sure, most of its 12-inch subs exceed the recommended daily maximum of 1,500 milligrams of salt per day. But any reduction in sodium is greatly welcome and Subway deserves a lot of credit for its efforts. It’s not easy for fast food chains to lower their sodium contents. A high salt content acts as preservative, helping ingredients last longer and reducing spoilage. So you can be sure that the change came at a great cost to Subway. But will Subway be riding this train on its own, or will other major fast-food franchises do the right thing and jump aboard?
Salt in the wound. To answer that previous question, we give you Wendy’s new Natural Cut Fries with Sea Salt. A few months ago, Wendy’s announced its new, healthier fries to much fanfare. In a notable feature, the fries are made from 100 percent Russet potatoes and the skin is left on as a way of reminding people they are actually eating real food. But here’s the catch: the sodium content of the “natural” fries skyrocketed 43 percent compared to the Wendy’s previous recipe. So that should pretty much tell you all you need to know about fast food getting healthier.
