It's possible to be predatory without holding people at gunpoint.

How is it predatory? For $10k you get a complete Chick-fil-A restaurant, without having to pay for any of the building or start-up costs. Sure, that means corporate will take a much bigger cut of your sales/profits, but that seems fair, since they're taking on most of the risk. I mean... it's $10k. Tell me where else you can start a restaurant from scratch for only $10k and retain 50% of the profits? As someone who has invested in a (non-franchise) restaurant before, this is potentially pretty attractive, if you want to run a franchise.

Even for a more "traditional" franchise, where the franchisee is responsible for all the start-up costs, even $50k is small peanuts compared to the full cost to bring the restaurant up from scratch. Calling that "predatory" feels like a gross exaggeration.

Is it really predatory? For many owners of a Chick-Fil-A, the money is life-changing, and would take 3-5 other franchise restaurants to equal their level of income as a CFA operator.

Again, nobody is telling you to join them if you dont want to though. You can make a competing restaurant yourself.

A predatory option can be present with a choice to join it. People can choose to not take such a deal but those who did, they got the worse of the deal by large margins. Even if they did choose that option, doesn't mean that deal was fair to them.

Yes. All it takes is a modestly good marketing strategy and legalese muddying the water enough to not make it completely obvious until it’s too late to back out or too complicated to advise to others.

I can't really follow your logic there. In my mind for something to be predatory it should be your pretty much only option while promising you the world, an end to your tough situation. If you have a choice and you end up worse off, you just got into a bad deal is all. The deal is fair because both parties thought it was a good deal, no one was forced or desperate. There was no scam involved either (everyone got what they were promised). I can't see how that can be predatory, or even unfair.

What about a used car salesman lying about the quality of the lemon they are selling someone? The target audience for a cheap used car may be desperate and not know a lot about cars. There may be multiple used car lot options around, that doesn't change the fact that many of them are predatory in their sales tactics.

Also Quiznos collapsed and was blamed for one franchisees eventual suicide due to their predatory tactics that locked franchise owners into paying high ingredient costs that they could not make a profit on.

When the wolf eats the rabbit in a fair fight, the wolf is still a predator, it's not an exchange of mutual benefit.

I don’t think the rabbit signed up to fight the wolf.