Isn't that technically true for all franchises?
If every restaurant is its own small/medium business and the corporate franchisor only ever interacts with the franchisees and never with the end customers, then all the direct revenue for the franchisor will be from services or licenses provided to the franchisees, not from directly selling burgers. But the franchisees are still much more dependent on the franchisor than they would be in a normal B2B relationship. And many of those "service costs" can be freely set by the franchisor and have the purpose of channeling revenue back from the restaurants - revenue that would not exist if no burgers were sold.
No.
The specific point here is that the McDonald's Corporation is often the landlord of its franchisees. Of course most franchisees of any franchisor are required to buy supplies etc from the franchisor, but McDonald's is famous for also charging them rent.