Asaf Rapaport and his partners in the founding of the Wiz company sold to Google – Inon Kostika, Ami Lutwak and Roy Resnik – are close to obtaining a franchise to operate the McDonald’s chain in Israel.
According to Kalkalist and The Marker, negotiations have reached the finish line, but the deal has not yet been signed.
Several groups have applied for the franchise. Among them are the owner of the Max Stock chain, Uri Max, the owner of the Maccabi Haifa football club, Yaakov Shahar, the Horesh family, which owns Union Motors and Super-Pharm, as well as a group led by the owner of the Cafe Cafe chain, Ronen Nimni.
At the end of 2025, the network had 235 points in Israel. Its annual turnover is estimated at approximately 1.7 billion shekels, and the cost of the Israeli franchise is $200–300 million.
Wiz was sold to Google for $32 billion, the largest deal in Israeli high-tech history. Each of the four founders received about $3 billion before taxes. Previously, Rapaport and Kostika acquired control of Channel 13.
Recall that in 2024, McDonald’s bought the Israeli franchise from Omri Padan, who owned it for more than 30 years and opened the chain’s first restaurant in Israel in 1993. The forced buyout came amid a boycott of McDonald’s in several countries due to the war in Gaza and discounts that the Israeli franchisee provided to IDF soldiers. Since then, the chain in Israel has been operated directly by McDonald’s.