Largest fast food companies in the world: revenue, system sales and restaurant counts

This list is for suppliers, software vendors and service firms that sell to restaurant chains, and for anyone who wants a sourced answer to which fast food company is biggest. Every figure comes from the company's own annual report (a 10-K or 20-F filed with the SEC, or a stock exchange filing), with the year it covers. Fast food here means quick-service and fast casual chains, including coffee and tea chains; full-service casual dining is left out.

The largest fast food companies by revenue

Revenue is total revenue as reported. Luckin and Mixue report in yuan; we converted at the Federal Reserve's 2025 average of 7.1875 yuan per dollar. System-wide sales include franchised restaurants' sales, which the franchisor doesn't book as revenue; "not reported" means the company doesn't publish the figure, and "not in summary" means it isn't stated in the 10-K's business overview. Employees are the company's own staff, not franchisees' staff, unless noted. Yum China's count is its 12,997 KFC and 4,168 Pizza Hut restaurants; its smaller brands are left out.

A few notes on reading the table:

• Yum! Brands' 63,285 units include Yum China's restaurants. Yum China is Yum! Brands' largest franchisee: it pays a 3% fee on system sales of KFC and Pizza Hut in mainland China. Don't add the two companies' counts together.
• Arcos Dorados describes itself as the world's largest independent McDonald's franchisee, with 4.4% of McDonald's global sales in 2025, so its restaurants are also inside McDonald's 45,356.
• Starbucks' latest 10-K covers the year to 28 September 2025. Its next 10-K, for fiscal 2026, is usually filed in November.
• Mixue's employee count is small (9,102) because 59,785 of its 59,823 stores are franchised; its revenue comes mostly from selling ingredients and equipment to franchisees.

Revenue, system sales and stores tell three different stories

Revenue favors chains that run their own restaurants. Starbucks operated 21,514 of its 40,990 stores itself (52%), and Chipotle owns essentially all of its restaurants, so their customers' spending is their revenue. McDonald's, by contrast, says about 95% of its restaurants were franchised at the end of 2025; its revenue is mostly rent, royalties and its own restaurants' sales.

System-wide sales show the size of the brand. McDonald's restaurants sold $139.4 billion of food in 2025, more than five times McDonald's own $26.9 billion of revenue and twice Yum! Brands' $68.3 billion. Yum's system sales split into KFC ($36.4 billion), Taco Bell ($18.4 billion), Pizza Hut ($12.8 billion) and Habit ($0.7 billion).

Store counts favor small formats. Ranked by locations, the order changes again:

Mixue added 13,344 stores in net terms in 2025 (from 46,479 to 59,823, including 1,354 from an acquisition), and Luckin is now larger by store count than Domino's. Both run small, low-cost formats, which is why their store counts outrun their revenue.

How we built the list

1. Who counts. Publicly listed quick-service and fast casual restaurant companies, including coffee, tea and dessert chains, that publish audited annual results. Master franchisees that are listed on their own (Yum China, Arcos Dorados) are included and flagged.
2. Measure. Total revenue as reported for the latest fiscal year with an annual report filed by 30 October 2026. We show system-wide sales and restaurant counts wherever the company states them, and opened every filing to check the figure.
3. Currency. Yuan figures are converted at the Federal Reserve's 2025 annual average (7.1875 yuan per dollar, G.5A release of 5 January 2026).
4. What's missing. Private chains don't publish audited results, so some very large US brands aren't here. Jollibee Foods is in the store-count table only: its full-year release states its store network but we couldn't open the revenue table. A few large Asian operators that report only in local filings aren't included.

Trade publications publish US-only rankings by system-wide sales, which are useful for brand size but won't match this table's company revenue.

What the list is good for if you sell to restaurant chains

Find out who signs the check. At a franchised brand, the franchisor's supply chain or procurement team approves products and suppliers and often negotiates system-wide contracts, but franchisees buy and pay. At company-operated chains such as Chipotle and much of Starbucks, the corporate team decides and buys. The franchise share in each 10-K tells you which motion you're in.

Pick the segment that fits your product.

Use the filings as a map. The 10-K's business section gives restaurant counts by country and the franchise split, and its risk factors usually name labor costs, food costs and technology projects. Our guide to selling to restaurants covers how independent and chain restaurants buy, and how to find decision makers covers reaching the procurement and operations owners.

Worked example

Illustrative example. Fryguard (fryguard.example) sells a fryer oil sensor with monitoring software for $40 per restaurant per month. Its founder wants $1 million of annual recurring revenue from burger and chicken chains.

• Units needed: $1,000,000 divided by ($40 x 12) = about 2,084 restaurants.
• The franchisor route: McDonald's has 13,706 US restaurants, about 95% franchised. An approved-supplier listing would put the product in front of every franchisee, but it takes a long evaluation, and the franchisees still choose whether to buy.
• The franchisee route: a franchise group with 50 restaurants is worth 50 x $40 x 12 = $24,000 a year. Reaching 2,084 restaurants takes about 42 groups that size.

Fryguard does both: it applies through the franchisor's supplier process for one brand, and in parallel sells to large franchisee groups of brands that already allow approved local suppliers, using each pilot as proof for the next. At volume, researching each franchise group and its owners is the slow part; Bebop finds and researches those accounts.

Next step: see how restaurant buying works at every size in our guide to selling to restaurants.