How much does it cost to open a McDonald's franchise in Australia?

McDonald’s is Australia’s best-known fast-food brand, and roughly 80–85% of its Australian restaurants are franchised. Securing one is a highly competitive vetting process — the company chooses operators, not the other way around. Figures below are indicative and were last verified in July 2026 — always confirm the current numbers against McDonald’s franchise disclosure document before committing. For the wider picture, see how much it costs to open a franchise in Australia.

The total upfront investment for a new McDonald’s restaurant generally falls between $1,200,000 and $2,600,000. The wide range reflects differences in location, store format and fit-out complexity. Buying an established, high-volume restaurant is a different scale again — anywhere from $4,000,000 to $12,000,000 depending on profitability and location.

McDonald’s financial requirements are among the toughest in franchising, and they’re non-negotiable:

• You need a minimum of $1,500,000 in personal, unencumbered liquid funds — cash and assets you fully own, not borrowed.
• No outside or silent investors are allowed. You must fund and run the restaurant yourself.
• You cannot borrow more than 70% of McDonald’s agreed valuation for your first store.
• Any borrowed setup debt must be repaid within 7 years.

The standard franchise agreement runs for 20 years, so this is a long-term commitment as much as a financial one.

Once you’re trading, McDonald’s takes ongoing fees off the top of your sales:

• Service (royalty) fee — 4% of gross sales (typically 4–5%). Paid for the use of the brand and system.
• Marketing / advertising levy — around 4% of gross sales (typically 3–4%). Funds national and local marketing.

These come off revenue before rent, wages, stock and utilities — and rent is where McDonald’s works differently from almost every other franchise.

The single most distinctive McDonald’s cost is rent. McDonald’s owns and controls the real estate and leases the restaurant to the franchisee — you don’t hold the property lease yourself. Crucially, that rent is charged as a percentage of gross sales, not a flat monthly figure, and it scales up as the store performs better. So the more your restaurant sells, the more you pay in rent as well as service and marketing fees. It’s a big reason McDonald’s controls its network so tightly, and why store-level profitability rests so heavily on the one major cost you can still influence: labour.

Even with the cash and the approval, there’s a hurdle almost no cost guide mentions: before you take over a restaurant, you must complete an intensive 9 to 24 month, largely unpaid, full-time on-the-job training program. You work in restaurants, learn every station, and prove you can run the operation to McDonald’s standards. For anyone still holding down another job or business, this is often the real barrier — it’s a career change, not a passive investment.

Setup cost is a one-off; the wage bill turns up every single week. For a McDonald’s restaurant it typically eats 25–32% of revenue, and it’s shaped almost entirely by who’s on shift. A McDonald’s crew is overwhelmingly junior and casual, working a roster that stretches from the breakfast rush before dawn to late-night close, with the drive-through open even longer. That means junior rates, the 25% casual loading, and evening, weekend and public-holiday penalties are the ingredients that build your wage bill — not the base hourly rate. Yet almost every “cost to open a McDonald’s” article stops at the franchise fee and never explains where that 25–32% comes from or how a good operator keeps it in line.

McDonald’s crew are covered by the Fast Food Industry Award (MA000003). What pushes the labour percentage up isn’t the base rate — it’s the workforce mix and the hours:

• A heavily junior, casual workforce — junior rates help, but only if you roster the right mix.
• Casual loading of 25% on top of the base rate, and most crew are casual.
• Long trading hours from early morning to late night, plus drive-through, so evening, weekend and public-holiday penalty rates land on a big share of shifts.

McDonald’s obligations under the award are set by the Fair Work system, so getting classifications, loadings and penalties right isn’t optional.

The lever is rostering to demand. A McDonald’s runs close to around the clock, so the roster has to flex across three moving fronts at once — front counter, kitchen, and a drive-through that often keeps trading after the lobby shuts — and coordinate a large bench of junior crew whose availability changes week to week. Staff the breakfast and lunch peaks and the Friday-night drive-through queue, thin out the mid-afternoon lull, keep hours off penalty windows where the trade allows, and always check rostered hours against what was actually worked. Getting that flex right across so many part-timers is the difference between a McDonald’s that clears a healthy margin and one that runs the owner into the ground — see reducing labour costs without understaffing.

It can be, but margins are tight and outcomes vary widely by site. Fast-food net margins typically run around 7–10%, and a high-performing store doing $3,000,000–$4,000,000 in revenue a year can yield a pre-tax profit of $350,000–$500,000 or more. Two things most affect the result:

• Sales-linked costs. With rent, service and marketing fees all rising as sales grow, strong turnover doesn’t automatically mean fat margins.
• Labour control. With those fees fixed as percentages and food cost largely set by the supply chain, labour is the biggest cost you can actually influence. A well-rostered store and a poorly-rostered one on identical sales can differ by tens of thousands in annual profit. For the wider view, see are franchises profitable in Australia?

What makes McDonald’s different from most franchises is that the brand is also your landlord, and the rent it charges rises as a percentage of your gross sales — so the harder the store trades, the more of that success flows straight back to McDonald’s, quietly capping the margin you keep. With the rent, service fee and marketing levy all set as percentages, and a 20-year agreement locking you into the model, labour is realistically the only major cost the operator still controls. That’s why the ongoing rostering decision matters far more than the opening cheque. If you go on to run more than one restaurant, multi-site rostering for franchise operators becomes the core skill — and it’s the problem RosterElf’s franchise workforce management is built to solve. Weighing other quick-service brands too? Compare the cost to open a KFC franchise and the cost to open a Subway franchise.