In the case of the "Brand Partners" [as McDonalds, KFC & Pizza Hut were known] when they arrived at Towers in 1998 - they were bought in on a 10 year deal. Basically Towers rented the units out to the operator in question for 10yrs & they were free to run it as they wished (doubtless with a few contractural restrictions). In the case of the McDonalds units, these were run by McDonalds UK themselves - not a local franchisee.
Certainly the McDonalds units created a lot of complaints, as many of the staff had attitude - and from the guests perspective "it was at Towers, so it's Towers problem", even though this was not actually the case. Towers did intervene a little in about 2001 and encouraged the brand partners not to re-employ certain staff.
The brand partner staff did get Dream Tickets - as they were then, i.e. the free admission tickets to Towers. Towers simply sold them onto the brand partners at whatever they deemed cost price was at the time, for them to pass onto their staff as an incentive.
When the 10yr deal came up for re-negotiation, Towers wanted to crank the rent on the units up through the roof, to a level that even McDonalds found unpalatable, so they walked. We then got Burger King under franchisee Karali, who was prepared to pay the high rent prices and pass that onto the customer. The rest is really history - it's all gone downhill since then on the on-park food front, with Burger King walking and them Merlin having a dabble in the on-park food game themselves, before now deciding to let someone else do it.
