McDonald’s Revenue, Net Worth, Marketcap, Competitors 2026

Richard (Dick) and Maurice (Mac) McDonald open a barbecue drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California in 1940. After several years of operation, they close briefly in 1948 and reopen with a radically simplified format: a short menu focused on burgers, fries, and beverages, with an assembly-line kitchen system they call the “Speedee Service System.” The idea is to make food faster and more consistently than any sit-down diner. The restaurant becomes locally famous and catches the attention of food equipment vendors operating across Southern California.

Ray Kroc, a 52-year-old multi-mixer salesman from Oak Park, Illinois, visits the McDonald brothers’ San Bernardino restaurant in 1954 after they place an unusually large order for eight milkshake machines. He is struck by the efficiency and volume of the operation and quickly grasps its replication potential. Kroc persuades the brothers to let him manage a franchising operation, and on April 15, 1955, opens the first McDonald’s franchise restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois — the date still recognised as McDonald’s official founding. Within three years, McDonald’s sells its 100 millionth hamburger.

Tensions between Kroc and the McDonald brothers over the pace of expansion and quality controls lead Kroc to buy out the brothers’ rights to the McDonald’s name in 1960 for $2.7 million — a figure that, given the subsequent scale of the business, became one of history’s most undervalued exits. The brothers retain their original San Bernardino restaurant but are legally prohibited from using the McDonald’s name. Kroc renames it “The Big M.” He later opens a McDonald’s directly across the street, which effectively ends the brothers’ remaining restaurant business.

Kroc launches a formal training programme for franchisees and restaurant managers in 1961 at a new restaurant in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. The programme — later called Hamburger University — trains operators in McDonald’s kitchen procedures, quality standards, customer service, and business management. It becomes a model for systematic franchise training. More than 80,000 people have graduated from the programme to date. McDonald’s extends the concept globally, with campuses eventually operating in the UK, Germany, Australia, China, and elsewhere.

McDonald’s opens its first international location in Richmond, British Columbia in 1967 — the same year it reaches 1,000 restaurants in the US. Expansion into Europe and the Pacific follows: the first German restaurant opens in Munich in 1971, Australia gets its first in Sydney in 1971, and Japan sees its first in the Ginza district of Tokyo in 1971. The international division, which begins as a small operation, grows over the following decades into the company’s largest revenue segment. By the 1990s, McDonald’s is opening a new restaurant somewhere in the world roughly every 17 hours.

Many of McDonald’s most enduring products originate with franchisees rather than corporate. Pittsburgh franchisee Jim Delligatti creates the Big Mac in 1967, which goes national in 1968. The Egg McMuffin, invented by Santa Barbara franchisee Herb Peterson in 1971, becomes the foundation of McDonald’s breakfast menu. Chicken McNuggets — developed in partnership with food scientist René Arend — launch nationally in 1983. Ronald McDonald, introduced regionally in the early 1960s, is rolled out nationally by 1966 and becomes one of the most recognised marketing characters in the world. By the time Kroc dies on January 14, 1984, McDonald’s has over 7,500 restaurants globally.

McDonald’s reaches 10,000 restaurants in 1988 and passes 20,000 in 1996. The company enters China, India, and dozens of emerging markets through the 1990s, typically through joint ventures or developmental licence agreements that allow local partners to manage regulatory and cultural complexity. By the late 1990s, McDonald’s is generating annual revenues of over $13 billion and its Golden Arches have become, by some measures, a more widely recognised symbol than the Christian cross. The dollar menu, drive-through lanes, and Happy Meal promotions cement McDonald’s as the default fast-food option for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

McDonald’s reports its first-ever quarterly loss in January 2003 as same-store sales slide, the menu grows unwieldy, and the company faces mounting criticism over obesity and food quality. The documentary “Super Size Me” (2004) intensifies public scrutiny. Jim Cantalupo, brought back as CEO from retirement in 2002, launches the “Plan to Win” turnaround strategy, focusing on improving existing restaurants rather than opening new ones, and adds salads, fruit, and premium options to the menu. Following Cantalupo’s sudden death in April 2004, Jim Skinner continues the recovery. By 2006 McDonald’s same-store sales have been rising for three consecutive years, and the stock — which hit a low of $12.37 in March 2003 — is recovering strongly.

Steve Easterbrook, previously head of McDonald’s UK operations, becomes CEO in March 2015 and immediately launches a financial restructuring centred on selling company-operated restaurants to franchisees. Between 2015 and 2019, McDonald’s refranchises roughly 4,000 restaurants, reducing company-operated locations from around 6,400 to approximately 2,700 and pushing the franchised percentage from 81% to 93%. Reported revenues decline from $25.4 billion in 2015 to $21.0 billion in 2018 — a deliberate consequence of replacing company-operated sales with smaller franchise fee revenues. Margins, cash flow, and earnings per share improve substantially. Easterbrook also acquires technology companies including Dynamic Yield (personalisation AI, ~$300 million) and Apprente (voice AI), accelerating McDonald’s digital investment. He is dismissed by the board in November 2019 after an investigation reveals he had a consensual relationship with an employee, in violation of company policy.

Chris Kempczinski, previously president of McDonald’s USA, takes over as global CEO in November 2019 and faces an immediate crisis when COVID-19 forces temporary closures or reduced operations across thousands of restaurants in 2020. Annual revenues fall to $19.2 billion as dine-in restrictions suppress sales across the International Operated Markets segment, particularly in France, Germany, and the UK. Drive-through and delivery channels partially offset the losses, and the US business performs better than international markets. McDonald’s launches its “Accelerating the Arches” growth strategy in late 2020, positioning digital ordering, delivery, and drive-through as the company’s primary growth engines going forward.

Revenue recovers to $23.2 billion in both 2021 and 2022 as restaurants reopen, and McDonald’s accelerates its digital transformation. MyMcDonald’s Rewards, the company’s loyalty programme, launches in the US in July 2021 and rolls out globally through 2022, reaching 150 million active users within two years. In December 2023, McDonald’s announces a partnership with Google Cloud to deploy AI, cloud, and IoT technology across thousands of restaurants globally, targeting faster service, reduced equipment failures, and more consistent food quality. The same year, a new smaller-format concept called CosMc’s — named after a character from 1980s McDonald’s advertising — launches as a pilot in Chicago, focusing on specialty beverages in a drive-through-only format, testing a different expression of the McDonald’s ecosystem.

In October 2024, a multi-state E. coli outbreak linked to slivered onions on Quarter Pounder burgers prompts a temporary nationwide removal of the Quarter Pounder from menus in affected states. The incident causes a decline in US comparable sales in Q4 2024, though the company moves quickly to trace and address the supply chain source. Despite this, full-year revenue reaches $25.9 billion and global systemwide sales exceed $130 billion. The company also announces plans to expand its loyalty programme to 250 million active users by 2027 and accelerate new restaurant openings, targeting approximately 2,200 new locations in 2025 as part of its push toward 50,000 global restaurants.