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Fast food is America’s national dish. About 37 percent of American adults consume fast food on any day. Cheap, fast, and tasty, with no cooking or dishes, fast food is a near-perfect fit for a culture of productivity, quick fixes, and economic challenges.
Indeed, one USDA research found that Americans buy fast food because (wait for it…) they’re short on time. American citizens are inspired to work all hours, and the more adult representatives of your family are employed, the more likely you are to eat fast food. It’s a solution that works for cash- and time-strapped parents who purchase fast food for their children because it strikes the ideal sweet spot of convenience and affordability.
Of course, parents also give children fast food because kids find it tasty. And let’s face it, so do grown-ups. Fast food feels good, whether it’s a perfectly honed formula for a quick, healthy meal or a guilty pleasure with inverse nutritional value.
However, if fast food is an American phenomenon, preferences differ from city to city and U.S. state to state. SavingSpot was curious about how tastes differ around the nation, so we headed to Google Maps to see how customers review them.
Mexican: Taco Bell, Chipotle, Qdoba, Del Taco, Taco John’s, Moe’s Southwest Grill, El Pollo Loco
The CashNetUSA team gathered the number of star reviews and total reviews for each fast-food chain restaurant from Google Maps. CashNetUSA sourced direct links to Google Maps from the restaurants’ sites for individual branches. When such links weren’t available, they explored Google Maps for the name and address of each branch. Addresses for some branches were already provided, and the team studied these using the above method.
For every fast-food restaurant, the number of reviews for each star rating was multiplied by the corresponding number of stars, varying from 1 to 5. The CashNetUSA team summed up these values, and the weighted average rating was calculated by dividing the sum by the total amount of reviews. They used the same method to calculate the weighted average rating for chains in each American state and the 50 most populous cities.
CashNetUSA isolated the worst and best fast-food chains overall and by cuisine in every U.S. state and city. They also isolated the worst and best individual fast-food restaurants within these specific chains. A threshold of at least one thousand reviews was applied for all sections to prevent entries with a small amount of primarily negative and positive reviews from topping the charts.
The Top-Rated Fast-Food Chain in Every State
It might be closed on Sundays, but that doesn’t stop Chick-Fil-A — aka the “home of the Original Chicken Sandwich” — from being the best fast-food chain in the most significant number of states (34). The capital A stands for “grade A top quality,” and this certainly seems to be true for U.S. states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, and Wyoming.
Below are the maps of the top-rated fast-food chains in every U.S. state per category.
The Top-Rated Fast-Food Chain in Major U.S. Cities
Fast food doesn’t necessarily mean low-quality food. Just ask Gordon Ramsay. The British chef and restaurateur is apparently a big fan of In-N-Out Burger, and he isn’t the chain’s only famous admirer. Julia Child also loved those tasty burgers. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the chain is especially popular in such celeb havens as San Francisco, Las Vegas, and LA.
The Bottom-Rated Fast-Food Chain Every State
The U.S. is arguably a nation of pizza lovers. According to Statista, pizza restaurant sales reached over $46 billion in 2020. Yet Papa John’s gets a particularly bad rap in the study. The restaurant came out bottom in areas including Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina. In 2015, these states were among a handful of others that accused the company of under compensating its delivery drivers. Coincidence?
Below are the maps of the bottom-rated fast-food chains in every American state per category.
The Bottom-Rated Fast-Food Chain in Major U.S. Cities
With restaurants all over the U.S., you might expect Domino’s coming out top among fast-food chains. Yet the SavingSpot team found it to be among the worst-rated in areas, including Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Maybe dropping their “30 minutes or less” pledge in such fast-paced cities has meant that hungry Americans just don’t want to wait for their pizzas.
The Top- and Bottom-Rated Restaurant for Each. U.S. Fast-Food Chain
You might have a favorite chain, but that doesn’t always guarantee your burrito will be as fabulous in Sacramento as it is in Dallas. Each individual restaurant can vary massively in quality. For example, Taco Bell in Germantown, Wisconsin, has a rating of just 2.58. However, Las Vegas, Nevada, is a much healthier, 4.38.
Key Findings
Chick-Fil-A is the top-rated fast-food chain in most U.S. states (34) and big cities (27 out of 50).
Papa John’s is the lowest-rated chain in 16 U.S. states, more than any other chain.
On a state-by-state basis, Five Guys is America’s favorite burger joint, and McDonald’s and Burger King are tied for America’s worst.
Twenty-one significant cities rate Domino’s as the lowest among fast-food chains – more than any other brand.
