McDonald’s isn’t actually a fast food restaurant but one of the largest commercial real estate companies in the world. The McDonald’s brothers opened up their first restaurant in 1951, but they eventually sold the McDonald’s Corporation to Ray Kroc for pennies on the dollar. He had a brilliant idea for the company that would eventually transform everything. Instead of the normal franchise model, McDonald’s would buy the land and rent out the building to the franchisees that were selling the actual burgers. The rent is usually 10% of the restaurants sales each month. On top of this, McDonald’s receives a royalty for the use of their name, image, and likeness. In other words, they were transforming their company from being focused on selling burgers to collecting rent. Today, McDonald’s owns some of the best real estate locations in the world. In fact, their portfolio is worth over $40 billion and a majority of their profits comes from the rent that they collect.