Credit Crunch Hits Quick-Service Restaurants

This Nation’s Restaurant News report details how GE Capital Solutions is slowing its lending to restaurant-franchise owners. This comes after recent reports (which have been refuted) that Bank Of America is cutting lending to McDonald’s owners that want to make expensive upgrades in their restaurants to add high-end coffee makers, seen as a threat to Starbucks.Ironically, this could mean good news for Starbucks, which has had its own problems. But for the overall industry, we doubt this is a good thing, especially since many of the major quick-service chains were relying on their franchisees to buy locations and take the reigns of future expansion plans.Is that reliance on franchisees likely to change and will we see more companies relying on corporate locations for growth? Or is growth a thing of the past in the sector?