Only knew food franchisees, not hotel ones where those can really make a bit in a good economy.
Obituary: Paul Najarian, business owner
Popeye's
There's a couple of physicians who own the Popeye's franchise in town. Long story short, the entire point was to give his useless son a job, and then he died supposedly of ALS early. Fairly high buy-in costs, business insurance is a PITA, hired a management company to do the real work. Probably could have made more elsewhere, but as stated, making lots of money wasn't the strategic goal.
McDonald's
Only know the manager to franchisee option where one of my high school classmates did that. He still works 70-80 hour weeks as a three store franchisee, but nets somewhere around the $2.2M range annually to himself after all considerations. The hardest working guy I know, was a scholarship boy, and that's considering that a good number of my class went on to be lawyers, advanced surgeons, and I-bankers. Worried as hell though that McDonald's will eventually go under do to Millennial eating habits.
Burger King
Really sad story in the Midwest, they all went totally bankrupt, and some hedge fund owns them all now.
Subway
Some nurses built the one next to the hospital I trained at (5 of them pooled something like $350k in 2006 to do it). One of the spouses was a CPA who manages the chain around the area. It makes money, but not as much as being a pharmacists, and everyone is worried about the bottom falling out. Has a homeless bum problem, since it's near the Central Library as well, and the store's been trashed a couple of times by druggies wanting cash.
So, you tie your fortunes to the mother company, for good or bad. There's a serious upfront cost, and you might even have to compete against company stores. But, it's changing one side of work for another, very few franchising companies allow a passive management owner, the mother company almost always has a buyback clause for those situations as they want you to put up with the risk too.
If you're a pharmacist, I'd recommend transferring in a retail setting to front-end to learn the work involved in managing a store on the company dime. More than one of my aunts and uncles run a bunch of pharmacies in town due to front-end management training in Walgreens and Osco as a paid education.