Southern California is the Fast Food Capital of the World

Membership Ticker

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you—especially at a moment like this. That's really it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a much shorter than normal three-week window, by November 5, so we can keep right on doing it. Please pitch in early to help us get there.

$250,000

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

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.