December 17, 2013

Southern California is the Fast Food Capital of the World


I realize that nobody cares about this, but for some reason I got curious about how many fast food chains were founded in Southern California. McDonald’s, obviously, but how many others? Then my OCD took over, and I ended up with an Excel spreadsheet of the top 50 fast food chains in America along with the states they were founded in. And since I wasted a bunch of time on this, I’m going to share it with you.

California, it turns out, accounts for 10 out of the 50—all of them in Southern California.1 We really are the fast food capital of the world. Texas and Georgia come in second with four each. However, the top city turns out to be Denver, home of Chipotle, Quiznos, and Qdoba. Who knew? The full list is below.

1Assuming Wikipedia is accurate, that is.

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THE TRUTH...

is the first thing despots go after. An unwavering commitment to it is probably what draws you to Mother Jones' journalism. And as we're seeing in the US and the world around, authoritarians seek to poison the discourse and the way we relate to each other because they can't stand people coming together around a shared sense of the truth—it's a huge threat to them.

Which is also a pretty great way to describe Mother Jones' mission: People coming together around the truth to hold power accountable.

And right now, we need to raise about $400,000 from our online readers over the next two months to hit our annual goal and make good on that mission. Read more about the information war we find ourselves in and how people-powered, independent reporting can and must rise to the challenge—and please support our team's truth-telling journalism with a donation if you can right now.

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