Bet you thought, as I did, that it would be McDonald’s. But you’d be wrong! A new mega survey by BusinessFinancing.co.uk has digested mountains of data from dozens of brand directories, financial publications and search engines to determine the most popular brands of everything, everywhere…
The master Fast Food preferences chart from businessfinancing.co.uk
A huge, detailed, full-sized version is available here.
Among the categories headlined in the official Consumer Brands Index for 2022, Fast Food brands naturally interests us the most on any given weekend. And the results are both informative and entertaining. You could build a Trivial Pursuit theme game out of them: for instance, “What is the fave Fast Food of Thailand?”
An upset victory in the category
“The big news in fast food is that KFC has leapfrogged McDonald’s to become the most popular brand in the most countries,” The report reveals. “McDonald’s has fallen from 75 to 39 countries since last year’s report, with KFC climbing from 65 to 83. The American multinational pizza joint Little Caesars is a new entrant as the most searched fast-food brand in Mexico.”
I hasten to add that Subway – with the most outlets worldwide of any Fast Food brand – doesn’t even show up in the Top 5 list.
What is tops?
The leaders are all well-known names in Europe and North America:
- KFC is the leader in 85 countries
- McDonald’s is still right up there, in second place, but well back at just 39 countries.
- Would you be surprised that Pizza Hut came third, with 18 countries?
- …Ahead of Burger King, with 14 countries?
- …And Domino’s Pizza, with just 6 countries, capturing 5th place?
Fascinating
My curiosity was piqued by how popular the big, mainstream brands are in all the other 150-odd countries included in the survey. After all, many of the cultures across the map are older – some far older – than those in Europe and North America. These ancient places have culinary traditions, including Fast Food, that differ as widely from the big chains’ as Thai Fried Tarantulas do from Cheeseburgers.
Check out some of our detailed explorations into traditional street foods around the world by using site search with the search term: ‘Street Food Discoveries’.
The info has been painstakingly encoded into a massive infographic, a copy of which is available by clicking here.
Other categories of interest…
- Starbuck’s is the most popular coffee shop – and the most popular food brand of all – with 143 countries
- Henieken is the world’s most beloved beer, leading in 77 countries
- Apple is Google’s most-searched smart phone brand with 141 countries
- Epic Games is world’s number 1 gaming brand with 122 countries
- Netflix is the most popular consumer brand overall with 92 countries
Lots to muse on today!
~ Maggie J.