Shocking New Data Reveals the Worst Fast Food Chain in America
Let's roll up our sleeves and face the truth: Fast-food is and will most-likely always be a major part of American culture.
With Chick-Fil-A spending the past decade as America's favorite fast food chain, only to recently have been dethroned by Del Taco, we wanted to take a look under the hood at the statistics and see which fast-food chain is the worst in America.
CouponBirds.com went through over 160K individual restaurant locations' reviews and did the heavy lifting for us. They broke their highest-rated rankings down by chain size, giving a top spot to "super-chains" (which includes Chick-Fil-A), medium-sized chains and small franchises. They limited the worst-rated restaurants to just one list.
The worst-rated fast-food chain is Taco John's. They have almost 400 locations in America and have the lowest customer ratings.
Taco John's has restaurants located in Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee.
Even more shocking, though, is who came in the runner-up spot. The second worst rated fast-food chain in America is McDonald's. According to the data, out of 2,589 businesses, McDonald's is the 2nd worst rated in the study with an average rating of 2.75 out of five.
Per LocationsCloud, there are more than 13,500 McDonald's in the U.S., and anyone who's been on a road trip can tell you how popular the fast food chain is: You're likely to see one at just about any truck stop. Delish also reports that McDonald's is the highest-grossing fast food chain in the US., raking in $53.1 billion in 2023.
But apparently, quite a few of those customers left unsatisfied.
Other notables on the worst fast-food chain list, based off of customer ratings, is Popeyes. They come in at 5th worst on the list, followed by Sonic, which is 6th.
CouponBirds.com notes that they "only analyzed businesses with four or more locations – as per this definition of a chain restaurant – and more than 50 reviews."
Taco John's 400 American locations are a third of McDonald's 13.5k American locations, but their negative comments and ratings accrued at those 400 locations are bad enough to boost them past the bigger franchise.
Take a full look at the numbers and the breakdowns and see where your favorite fast-food chain ranks amongst consumers in America.
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