Fernando De Leon

But what I did was I said, I think this concept is massive and people love it and they have this connection to it.

you know, a large percentage of people surveyed, they go to Chick-fil-A, when you ask them if it's fast food will tell you it's not.

So it tells you, you know, the service, everything was built with intentionality.

And I wanted to participate in in that business plan, but I couldn't.

So the way I couldn't invest in the company directly.

So what I decided to do was, I had a piece of land, the very first built a building that I built for Chick-fil-A, I owned a piece of land in

San Angelo, Texas, small little town.

I had bought some land from a bank that had default, a borrower had defaulted on a piece of land.

And I owned these sites all over the state of Texas.

And Chick-fil-A really wanted that site.

And I said, well, I will, I'll build it for you.

They said, no.

And we, you know, we traded hard for a while and they finally agreed and we built a building that they leased.

And my philosophy of that was to say, well, if I can't invest in the company,

But let's say that Chick-fil-A was selling $2 million of product, of chicken there, and I was renting the building for $200,000 to them per year.

That means that for every 10 pieces of chicken that they sold, one of them was being sold on my behalf because I owned $200,000 of rent as a royalty on a top $2 million sales figure.

So I effectively own one-tenth of their total revenue production at that site.

and that was my way to be in business with Chick-fil-A.

And I did that with Starbucks, and I did that with many companies around the country.

7-Eleven, that was my philosophy about it, was if I could own the real estate, whoever leased it from me was effectively my partner on some portion that came to me through rent.