Family friend owns all the Tim Hortons (Dunkin Donuts of Canada) in PEI (Canadian province).
Don't remember how many he has. Probably about ten or so by now. He lives in a castle and when his 10 year old daughter (this was quite a few years ago now) wanted to get into horses he bought her a few worth 60k and has three or four employees taking care of them.
What you want, regardless of franchise, is rights to only build xyz in this area. So you lose any potential competition. This is common place is most franchises now.
More franchises than you'd think require you to work full time in the store or work xyz amount of hours. I know the guy who has a few M&M meat markets around here and he has to work full time, like his $8/hr employees, but he probably pulls down nearly a million a year surprisingly.
I guess my best advice in terms of franchises is that you'll need to have one expensive start-up store (a McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc) or lots of little stores (Subways, etc).
Franchises are good for the reason you have an immediate brand and reputation, consistency in distributers and all the training materials and stuff needed to get started. I can't speak for many companies but McDonalds invests heavily into making sure you succeed.
It doesn't reflect well on the brand when you close down a store and apparently it's not as simple as "doors are closed", you need word from head office.
Friend of mine owns two Wendy's in the city. I think he needed to prove he had a million in cash in his bank account in order to open the first.
Not sure the exact numbers he does but probably right around a million. He spends the summer up here and the winter in Australia. Also has a Ferrari, big house and a few expensive toys.
I don't think he works a whole lot... But I know he's in the stores at least a few days of the week doing the operations just the same as the other employees.
So either get a few little ones going up or wait to hit the big one. Also don't get your hopes up just because there isn't xyz in your town yet. I looked at bringing a Taco Bell here awhile ago and the guy who has KFC has the rights to opening a Taco Bell... he just hasn't done it yet.
EDIT: Worth noting the Wendy's guy, quite a few years ago now, almost closed one of his stores because it was losing so much money. He invested a ton of money in updating it and hired a whole new staff. Dedicated and educated staff is the most important part and when he hired a new manager (they make about 100-200k yearly, it's not a small job) it turned the place around and now makes him more than his main store.
Also after xx amount of years you'll need to totally rebuild your store or completely renovate it unless you have a special case (like in an old historic building, etc).
