>>510217340 (OP)Most of these companies have most of their equity in comercial real-estate.
Pizza hut, McDonald's (chipotle), burger king, Wendy's, and every other fast food company and franchise only use the capital generated by selling their product to pay for the property taxes on their comercial real-estate that the restaurants sit on. The actual money that is generated for their investors comes from the price of comercial real-estate going up.
McDonald's created a system with Chipotle pop-up shops that was extremely effective at maintaining real-estate value without overhead so every company is looking to copy that.