Top food service franchise For more than 40 years, these quick-service franchises have proved that fast food is here to stay. Whether its pizza, hamburgers, tacos or donuts, these tasty franchises continue to draw crowds around the world. Here are our picks for the top food service franchise of 2008. The "Top 400" restaurant franchisors' sales were relatively flat, according to a company statement on the report. They generated roughly $31.8 billion in sales in 2009, up 1.6 percent from the previous year. They represented about 8.8 percent of the total commercial restaurant industry’s sales of $359.7 billion. Units rose about 4.5 percent to 25,889 stores. Limited service restaurants did better with franchising than did casual, due to higher investment costs associated with the latter segment: Among the Top 100 LSRs, franchisees operated 79 of units and accounted for almost 72 percent of sales in 2009, according to the executive summary. Top 100 FSR top food service franchise were in charge of just under 41 percent of units and brought in not quite 31 percent of sales. Other key findings: • NPC International, a major franchisee of Pizza Hut, was once again the top franchise company with sales of $845 million, up 22.5 percent nominally over 2008. • Chains with the greatest sales from franchisees were McDonald’s, Subway and Burger King, with franchise sales of $26 billion, $10 billion, and $7.7 billion respectively. The report's appendices sort the Top 400 companies alphabetically and offer concept breakdowns by franchise company and brand, regions of company operations and selected franchise cost-structure analysis for leading restaurant brands. A complete listing of franchise company contacts is also included. It is common and popular route now for those wanting, or always wanting "to open a restaurant" to go the franchise route. It is not so much that you are buying a restaurant or any other business when you purchase a franchise. It is that the purchaser is obtaining for the value of his money proven systems. It is the systems that are on the table - not the top food service franchise or hospitality business. Two areas of emphasis that owners and operators typically spend a fair amount of time and wasted time every working day are firstly time spent with vendors and suppliers. The second is in the preparation of ingredients themselves or on items that lack profitability for their venture.