The cliche about McDonald's is true- Use the restaurant as a mechanism to pay for the real estate it's on. My brother did that with a burrito place and now a bbq place. He learned it from the father of a friend, who had done with with several Dairy Queens. Instead of rent, you're building wealth with your lease payments (to yourself).

Of course, now you have to qualify for the mortgage too, which is hard starting out, but once the machine gets running for you, it's not too bad to expand it to other locations.