Just how many millions and billions of hamburgers has McDonald's sold over the years?
Obviously, it's a lot, but let's get down to the nitty-gritty with the numbers of this
global burger machine.
Here's everything you ever wanted to know about the Golden Arches and their burger boasting.
The number of burgers sold has certainly skyrocketed since the first San Bernardino, Calif., McDonald's
opened, but the restaurant group has been bragging about its burger sales since its
earliest days.
Richard "Dick" McDonald is credited with coming up with both the idea for McDonald's golden
arch logo, as well as the burger counter that went along with it.
In 1948, the McDonald brothers closed their small barbecue stand and did an overhaul of
the food preparation and serving process.
When it reopened, barbecue was out and burgers, fries, and shakes were in.
Sales were slow at first, but after a few months, customers began coming in droves.
To mark the food's popularity, the brothers put up a painting of a red thermometer in
the restaurant's window.
Sales soon hit 1,000 burgers and when the millionth hamburger sale came in, the plan
was to have the artist mark the occasion with a painted explosion at the top of the thermometer.
It wasn't long before the press and public took notice either.
A 1952 story by the trade journal American Restaurant touted McDonald's popularity and
efficiency, revealing that the business was dishing out "one million hamburgers and 160
tons of french fries a year."
And are you surprised?
Who doesn’t like McDonald’s?
"We have Big Macs, we have quarter pounders with cheese, we have everything that I like
that you like."
A million burgers a year is now, of course, small potatoes, and once Ray Kroc came on
board to make McDonald's a national sensation, burger sales soared.
McDonald's was chugging along fine as a small chain of restaurants in the early 1950s.
Food sales were in the millions, and the brothers were making enough money to buy themselves
brand new Cadillacs.
It was in 1954, though, that everything really changed.
The brothers went into business with Ray Kroc, a milkshake salesman who envisioned McDonald's
moving well beyond the West Coast.
Under his drive to expand, their burger sales exploded.
By the time Kroc opened his Illinois McDonald's location in 1955, McDonald's had sold over
15 million burgers, only seven years after the McDonald brothers re-opened their humble
burger stand.
It was the first McDonald's location east of the Mississippi River.
By 1958, McDonald's had expanded significantly and sold 100 million burgers with Kroc on
the team.
Just two years later, he had pushed that number to 400 million.
More locations, of course, meant a lot more burgers, and Kroc wasn't shy about his role
in elevating McDonald's sales, even bragging,
"I didn't invent the hamburger.
I just took it more seriously than anyone else."
Everybody knows that McDonald's sells a lot of hamburgers.
Figuring out just how many they sell by the second seems impossible.
But somebody was able to figure it out, and in 2013, the fast-food giant was reportedly
moving around 75 burgers each and every second.
This burger data roughly breaks down to 4,500 burgers every minute, 270,000 every hour,
6.48 million every day, and 2.36 billion burgers every year.
It’s evident that the world is in love with the chain’s burgers.
Other estimates have put McDonald's burger sales at 50 million a day, worldwide, at least,
which means they’re moving an insane amount of beef.
The McDonald brothers knew from the start that they'd sell more burgers if the process
was as streamlined as possible.
Part of this equation was taking the choice out when it came to toppings.
Their whole concept relied on speed, low prices, and volume.
The brothers created the Speedee Service System, named after the chain’s mascot, Speedee,
who came along way before Ronald McDonald.
The Speedee Service System was what made their hamburger stand so cutting edge and allowed
them to cook up 40 patties in 110 seconds and get a meal to a customer in 20 seconds.
"Here you are."
"What's this?"
"Your food."
"No, no, no.
I just ordered."
"And now it’s here."
Without that service in place, the numbers never would have climbed as high as they have.
These days, you may not get your meal served quite that quickly all the time; McDonald's
continues to place an emphasis on speed when it comes to selling its burgers.
And believe it or not, a hamburger, for example, can be cooked and fully assembled on average
in just 112 seconds.
"Are you serious?"
"I'm dead serious."
According to McDonald's corporate, if there are no other orders, a customer should be
able to have a Quarter Pounder on their tray in 180 seconds with 122 of those seconds being
the patty's cooking time.
Impressive.
There wasn't another fast food chain in the United States as popular as McDonald's in
the ‘60s, and 1963 was a pretty important year for the Golden Arches for several different
reasons.
It marked the debut of the growing chain's first TV commercial, as well as the introduction
of McDonald's clown mascot, Ronald McDonald.
While Ronald might have been all the rage for kids back then, Ray Kroc was more focused
on a groundbreaking number for the chain.
Of course, we're talking about their billionth burger.
McDonald's was reportedly selling a million burgers a day at that point, and Kroc arranged
to have the billionth burger broadcast for the entire country to witness.
The monumental occasion was marked with Kroc himself coming on TV host Art Linkletter's
variety show to present the host with the monumental hamburger.
McDonald's had been counting and advertising its burger sales on store signs for over 40
years when it decided things were getting a little redundant.
According to The New York Times, the chain stopped posting its burger sales on location
signs in 1994.
That means McDonald's signs have been pretty vague about the number of burgers its customers
have gobbled up over the past few years.
Some McDonald's signs merely read "over 99 billion served," while other locations have
signs that read "billions and billions served."
So why have their signs been perpetually stuck in '90s mode?
Well, it appears that whoever was on burger-counting duty at McDonald's global headquarters missed
their shift, because the 100 billion mark passed right under their nose.
Rather than admit to the world that they had let the big occasion slip by them, they just
opted for, quote, "billions and billions served,” and some McDonald's signs today don't seem
to even allude to just how many billions of burgers they've served up.
Speaking of those signs, the old signs of the past certainly gave the impression that
the company was specifically referring to hamburgers.
Of course, your nearest McDonald's sign today is a little vaguer and the word hamburgers
isn't even mentioned.
So what exactly is that "billions and billions served" referring to, customers or burgers?
According to a now-defunct blog that stopped tracking McDonald's burgers in 2010, the company
is referring to hamburgers, beef patties, specifically.
This means that anytime a customer orders a Big Mac or double cheeseburger, the company
isn't counting that one burger, but rather its two patties.
Ray Kroc reportedly said the company would track how much meat was shipped to each location
over the course of a year and divide that weight by the weight of a single patty to
attain their numbers.
McDonald's might not be totally transparent with its burger count up on their signs, but
their numbers are still mighty impressive.
McDonald's signs today may not be regularly updating customers on how many billions of
burgers have been served, but we all know that number is ever increasing.
For those curious about how many burger sales McDonald's has under its belt, let's look
at a few reports that didn't end up on your local Golden Arches sign marquee, as well
as some math figures.
By January 2013, McDonald's was reportedly closing in on selling its 300 billionth burger.
Considering that this report was from 2013, it's safe to assume that McDonald's has far
surpassed that and could even be eyeing the 400 billionth burger in the not too distant
future.
Science Everywhere blogger Dan Re decided to calculate where McDonald's burger totals
sat in October 2017.
By using the chain’s annual estimated burger sales of five billion a year, that helped
them jump from 80 billion in 1990 to 100 billion in 1994, and applying the system-wide sales
growth percentage from McDonald's annual financial reports, he came up with a served total of
377 billion as of 2017.
Those numbers may not be spot on, but whatever the current number is, you can bet it's astronomical.
After the McDonald brothers sold the company to Ray Kroc in 1961, they were generally cut
out from all of the restaurant's operations.
Years, later, Dick McDonald’s grandson confirmed what had always been suspected.
"Did your grandfather ever mention Ray Kroc to you?"
"Not really.
Ray Kroc was kind of a touchy subject."
Kroc was generally regarded by McDonald's as the founder, but the fast-food chain aimed
to make things right years later by including the McDonald brothers in some of their celebrations.
Part of this long overdue recognition involved including Dick McDonald in its Founders Day
ceremonies in 1991, which, until then, had only celebrated Kroc, and giving him an engraved
gold-plated spatula that was used to flip McDonald's 50 billionth burger six years earlier.
At the time he was given the honorary spatula, McDonald's burger count had already reached
85 billion.
Kroc wasn't around for that historic 50 billionth burger either, as died almost 10 months before
the big milestone.
The Big Mac has been McDonald's premier burger for over 50 years now, and it certainly holds
some weight when it comes to those billions of burgers served.
Invented by Pennsylvania McDonald's franchisee Jim Delligatti in 1967, the Big Mac cost less
than 50 cents at the time.
Other fast food chains have certainly tried to imitate its success but few have succeeded
with the same results.
McDonald's reportedly sells 550 million Big Macs each year, and it remains their most
popular sandwich.
Not only is it available in over 100 countries, but the Big Mac even has its own museum.
Perhaps the biggest testament to the Big Mac's impact on McDonald's burger sales, like the
museum wasn't enough, is Don Gorske.
The Wisconsin Big Mac-lover was recognized in 2016 by Guinness World Records for scarfing
down 28,788 Macs.
Not one to call it quits, Gorske kept up his 14 Big Macs a week diet and beat his own record
with 30,000 Big Macs.
Maybe Gorske deserves some sort of official McTrophy for doing his small part to help
McDonald's out with all those burger sales.
Most of us probably don't think too much about just how much beef it takes to fill all those
McDonald's burger orders occurring every second.
Plain and simple, it's a lot.
It takes a lot of resources to generate all that food.
For example, one pound of grain-fed beef requires about 1,800 gallons of water, while not all
of the cows that provide beef for McDonald's are grain-fed, some of them are.
Pinning down exactly how much beef McDonald's buys worldwide every year is tricky.
For example, in Canada, McDonald's goes through 190,000 pounds of beef a day and buys 70 million
pounds a year!
Nobody buys more beef in the world than this fast-food chain, and in 2018, the company
began using more fresh beef, as opposed to the more commonly used frozen patties.
All those burgers sold haven't come without some backlash, though.
The company came under fire from environmental advocates for the amount of land that it uses
to produce all of its beef.
These advocates criticized the company for contributing to deforestation.
To McDonald's credit, they don't seem to be totally blind to the issue, and they’re
striving to implement more sustainable practices in their beef production.
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