Sounds like he overpaid for the franchises themselves. That's just called a bad investment. I'd generally expect a restaurant to do twice as much in sales (or

Sounds like he overpaid for the franchises themselves. That's just called a bad investment. I'd generally expect a restaurant to do twice as much in sales (or more) in a year compared to the initial cost, and be able to recuperate the initial investment in 5-10 years (one of the more recent restaurateurs I worked for paid back his investors in 3 years, and has a second location 5 years in). But even using his sub-par numbers, $750K a year since the 80's means he's already recuperated his costs and made some serious profits since. What more does he expect? He could close them all tomorrow and be ahead. If anything, this anecdote does show just how greedy some people are.