A franchisor approving a lease form creates no payment obligation. Unless the franchisor signs as guarantor or the lease names them, they owe you nothing, and most franchise agreements give the brand a right to step in and take over the unit without any duty to assume your lease at your rent. Keystone's reasoning describes a real incentive, and incentives don't pay rent on the first of the month.
What to demand before your deposit goes hard. Three years of the operator's financial statements plus a current debt schedule. Unit-level sales for this store and ideally the other 11. Rent as a percentage of sales at the box, where mid-single digits is healthy for QSR and anything north of 10% means the store is carrying the real estate rather than the reverse. A financial reporting covenant written into the lease going forward, because without it you're blind from closing onward. Then either a personal guarantee from the principals, a cross-guarantee from the other entities, or a letter of credit sized to 12 to 18 months of rent. If none of that is available, you're pricing an unsecured obligation from a small private borrower at 6.9%.
On the cap, the number you're really buying is $49.50 a foot on a 2,400 foot building. Ask what a fresh drive-thru pad rents for in that submarket. If it's $38, the second-generation tenant resets your income down 25% and your value with it, and the guarantee question becomes secondary.
Separately, a third of your equity in one non-rated tenant is a concentration decision more than a real estate decision. That's yours to make, but make it deliberately rather than because the yield was 60 basis points better.
