McDonald’s is pushing toward operating 50,000 restaurants globally by the end of 2027. If the burger giant hits this number, it would reclaim the title as the largest fast-food chain by number of locations.
That would end Subway’s more than decade-long reign as the world’s largest restaurant brand by unit count. Subway has held the position since 2011, when it overtook McDonald’s globally, a ranking that has started to slip in recent years.
McDonald’s has framed the expansion as a core pillar of its long-term growth strategy, even with rising operating costs and a tighter consumer environment, according to analyst reports and recent earnings commentary.
The push aligns with the franchise model Ray Kroc built decades ago. “Our aim was to insure repeat business based on the system’s reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator,” McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc wrote in his book Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s (1977).
A tale of two trajectories
Subway first overtook McDonald’s domestically in 2002, when it had 13,247 US stores to its name. In line with a Fox News report at the time, that was 148 more than McDonald’s had in the country.
The two chains have moved in opposite directions in the years since. Subway has closed roughly a third of its US locations since 2016, while McDonald’s keeps opening them.
Mark Kalinowski, a fast-food analyst who previously worked at Salomon Smith Barney (now Citigroup), noted that more units bring visibility but don’t always translate into outsized financial gains.
The downward turn for Subway picked up speed in 2015 following the arrest of longtime spokesperson Jared Fogle. Per an FBI press release at the time, Fogle was charged with distributing and receiving child pornography and engaging in commercial sex acts with minors.
The fallout for the brand was immediate. Patrick Hillman, a vice president at Levick Communications, a crisis management firm, described the situation as “horrific” in an interview with Market Dive. He recommended that Subway needed to acknowledge the crisis and swing back to its commitment to healthy options as a way of distancing itself from the actions of the spokesperson.
The damage to the chain, however, showed up in the unit count and never really stopped. Based on findings by QSR Magazine, Subway’s domestic store base shrank for the tenth straight year in 2025 with 729 net closures. The chain has now lost a net 8,345 restaurants since its 2015 peak of 27,000 locations.
In a recent article, Jonathan Maze, editor in chief of Restaurant Business, pointed to a different problem from the same era as the reason for the decline in outlet count. He noted that the aggressive growth Subway pursued in earlier years may have ended up cannibalizing its own stores. According to him, locations were sitting too close together, and the over-saturation cut into the profitability of individual franchisees across the network.
Add to it all, the brand has also faced intensifying competition that did not exist during its peak growth years in the 2000s and early 2010s. Chains such as Chipotle and Jersey Mike’s, widely viewed as offering higher-quality ingredients and fresher preparation, have challenged Subway’s longstanding “Eat Fresh” positioning.
Sources: McDonald’s, NPR, Asatunews, QSR Magazine, FBI, Marketing Dive