QSR 2026: One Sector, Four Markets

By ANL Research · August 2026

One sector, four markets

Quick service is quoted as a single number. Split it by what the tenant actually sells and four distinct markets appear, 99 basis points apart.

Sub-segment	Listings	Average	Median	Avg term	Avg price
Chicken	76	5.05%	4.73%	15.2 yrs	$3.76M
Mexican	21	5.27%	5.25%	18.6 yrs	$2.52M
Burger & drive-in	113	5.34%	5.65%	15.6 yrs	$2.65M
Coffee & beverage	70	5.65%	5.61%	12.0 yrs	$2.65M
Other QSR	25	6.04%	5.90%	15.5 yrs	$2.39M

Chicken is the tightest money in quick service at 5.05%, and it is also the most expensive product on the shelf at $3.76 million average asking price — roughly a million dollars above every other segment. That is Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane’s and Popeyes: newer buildings, larger sites, heavier drive-thru infrastructure, and the best unit-level sales figures in the category. A buyer entering this segment is buying at the top of the market by every measure, and should be clear that is the trade.

Coffee is the anomaly. It asks 5.65% — 60 basis points wider than chicken — despite carrying household credits like Starbucks. The reason is in the term column: 12.0 years against 15.2 for chicken. Coffee leases are structurally shorter, often ten-year initial terms on smaller drive-thru pads, and the market prices that duration gap rather than any doubt about the brands.

Mexican is the term outlier. At 18.6 years it carries the longest average remaining term in quick service and still asks 5.27%. On the term curve alone it looks mispriced tight — which is a Taco Bell franchisee story, and one worth checking guarantee by guarantee.

Nineteen tenants, ranked

Every quick-service tenant in our live book carrying three or more listings — 295 of the 305 total. The range from top to bottom is 321 basis points.

Tenant	Listings	Average ask	Average term
McDonald’s	29	3.89%	18.4 yrs
Chick-fil-A	31	4.27%	14.0 yrs
Raising Cane’s	11	4.66%	14.5 yrs
Whataburger	16	5.03%	11.4 yrs
Taco Bell	21	5.27%	18.6 yrs
Dutch Bros Coffee	13	5.35%	14.9 yrs
Dunkin’	14	5.54%	15.3 yrs
Bojangles’	6	5.63%	10.5 yrs
Starbucks	34	5.67%	9.8 yrs
Popeyes	19	5.76%	17.9 yrs
Wendy’s	30	5.77%	15.8 yrs
Arby’s	10	5.80%	16.6 yrs
7 Brew Coffee	8	6.03%	15.0 yrs
Sonic	7	6.06%	14.6 yrs
Burger King	24	6.12%	15.1 yrs
KFC	9	6.37%	15.1 yrs
Pizza Hut	6	6.50%	12.9 yrs
Dairy Queen	3	6.58%	20.0 yrs
Jack in the Box	4	7.10%	12.7 yrs

Term averages cover 224 of these 295 listings — 7 Brew’s 15.0 yrs rests on one, Dairy Queen’s 20.0 on two.

Read the two right-hand columns together and the ranking stops looking like a credit ranking. Starbucks has the shortest average term in the table at 9.8 years and still asks inside Burger King, which carries 15.1. Dairy Queen has the longest at 20.0 and asks 6.58%. Term matters, but at the tenant level brand matters more.

What ground lease is worth, segment by segment

Across the whole live book, ground-lease product asks 112 basis points inside fee simple. Inside quick service that premium is not evenly distributed — and in one segment it disappears entirely.

Sub-segment	Ground lease	Fee simple	Difference
Chicken	4.58% (14)	5.89% (9)	131 bps
Burger & drive-in	4.64% (5)	5.82% (14)	118 bps
Mexican	4.76% (2)	5.93% (2)	117 bps
Coffee & beverage	5.69% (7)	5.61% (12)	8 bps wide

Chicken carries the widest ground-lease premium in the sector at 131 basis points. Coffee carries none at all — its ground leases actually ask 8 basis points wider than its fee simple, inverting the pattern that holds everywhere else. On samples this small we would not over-read the sign, but the absence of a premium is itself the finding: a coffee drive-thru pad is a small parcel with a purpose-built structure, and the land residual that makes a ground lease valuable elsewhere is simply worth less here.

Tenure is stated on 61 of 305 QSR listings. Every cell above names its own count; treat the Mexican row as illustrative only.

The Yum! Brands test

The cleanest demonstration that brand outruns credit sits inside a single corporate family. Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut share a parent, and in most of the deals we see all three are franchisee-operated on comparable lease forms. They ask 5.27%, 6.37% and 6.50% — a 123 basis point span with the corporate credit held constant.

Term explains only a little of it. Pizza Hut’s 12.9-year average sits in the ten-to-fifteen band and Taco Bell’s 18.6 in the fifteen-plus band, a move our term curve prices at 31 basis points. That leaves roughly 92 basis points as the market pricing three brands’ unit economics differently, with the same parent on the guarantee.

What this means for a buy box. “Yum! Brands credit” is not an underwriting standard. Neither is “QSR.” The tenant, the term and the tenure explain the price; the sector and the parent explain almost nothing.

What has to change for these levels to move

We do not forecast cap rates. What we can do is name the specific, observable things that would have to move first — and tell you where we would see them in our own book before they reach a quarterly report.

• The chicken premium narrowing. Chicken asks 29 basis points inside burger on a shorter average term. That gap is a bet on unit-level sales holding. If new Raising Cane’s and Chick-fil-A product starts clearing wider, it will show up in the sub-segment table before anywhere else.
• Coffee lease terms lengthening. Coffee’s 5.65% is largely a 12.0-year term story. Operators moving to fifteen-year initial terms on new drive-thru product would compress that segment without any change in credit.
• The ground-lease premium. 112 basis points book-wide is a large, stable number. It is also the first thing to move when long-duration capital retreats, because ground lease is the most bond-like product in the category.
• McDonald’s under 4%. Twenty-nine listings averaging 3.89% is the tightest pocket we track. It is the clearest single read on whether the very top of the market is still bid.

Methodology

Built from the live inventory in the American Net Lease database as of August 15, 2026: 305 active quick-service listings, every one carrying an asking cap rate stated by the listing broker. Duplicate and withdrawn listings are excluded. No cap rate here is derived, imputed, or estimated by us.

These are asking cap rates, not closed transactions. We are reporting what sellers are asking, not what buyers paid. We hold no verified closed-transaction dataset today, and nothing here should be read as a transaction comp.

Not every field is stated on every listing, and the denominators differ. Remaining term is stated on 233 of the 305 QSR listings and tenure on 61. The tenant table covers the 19 tenants with three or more listings, which is 295 of 305. Each table names its own counts; cells built on fewer than five listings are flagged in the text as illustrative.

Sub-segments are our own classification, assigned by primary menu category, and are not an industry standard. The “outlook” section names observable conditions rather than forecasting levels; it is our reading, not a projection.

Nothing here is investment advice. Investors evaluating a specific asset should verify current pricing, lease guarantees and tenant credit independently. Every figure is reproducible from our database on request.

ANL Research publishes a market note every Monday. American Net Lease represents buyers of single-tenant net lease retail.