published: 2025-08-01
What follows, is not investment advice. Nor is it to be construed as a solicitation. It is a thesis—archived, not pitched.
The decision to place $7,000 (or $5,000 in equivalent holdings through covered calls) into McDonald's Corporation ($MCD) is not based on yield alone. It is based on the real and observable function McDonald's serves in the infrastructure of American life. This is not a defence of fast food, but of fast yield, slow capital, and sovereign routing in a landscape of dominated by feudal apps.
McDonald's is not a restaurant, nor a burger chain. It's a real estate investment trust (REIT) fronting as a successful franchise. A caloric embassy at the corner of labour and logistics. It owns the dirt beneath its treads and the clouds above its chimneys. It doesn't merely serve cheeseburgers—it anchors movement.
A modest $600/yearly budget for McDonald's may seem like personal indulgence, but in practice, it is the cost of caloric continuity while in transit. A warm shelter, a clean bathroom, an open outlet, a predictable parking layout, and 900 calories bagged at 2,000 RPM. This is not consumers discretionary. It is capital and operational expenditure for the general contractor.
And that is just upstream. The pipeline:
In sum, the hedged position covers one's meal expenses. Not as a mere consumer, but as a franchise-sponsored node in an energy grid.
Unlike its competitors, McDonald's owns its corners. That's not metaphor—it is sovereignty. Other chains lease. McDonald's plants flags. It is a franchisor, but primordially, it is a landholder with guaranteed throughput. The land pays rent to the corporation. The corporation pays rent to its shareholders. The burger is the cover story that sells the real estate.
Which leads to an important point: the Big Mac Index. The metric once used to chastise emerging markets for their low purchasing power. Today, in the U.S., a Big Mac costs approximately three-fourths of a minimum wage hour. But if one spends consciously—through apps, through equity, through options—it can cost $0.
A DRIP-ped $MCD position, paired with reward points and buy-writes, makes McDonald's not just a holding, but a self-replenishing node in a personal logistics stack.
The return is not just financial but also territorial. One owns a stake in the only sovereign energy grid with infrastructure present in every zipcode. And that's before one even prices in the unquantified yield:
McDonald's still sells burgers, since its conception. But the business model is platform monopolisation. And $MCD is the leasehold. $5,000 allocated with a LEAPS hedge is not indulgence. It is a measured land grab in the empire of errand-stacking.
Thus: I'm Lovin' DRIP!
These ideas are not meant to be cloned, but peer-reviewed and understood. Private equity is still capital. And equity seeks equitability—through the streets and on the spreadsheets. And equity routed via $MCD, simply DRIPs.