The Top 5 Fast-Food Brands with the Most Restaurants in the United States

1. In the year 2007 Fast food chains dominate the American fast food market in terms of sales, transactions and number of outlets. The number of fast food outlets in the U.S. reached 248,355 in 2007, up from 225,777 in 2002. Take-away sales accounted for 73% of fast food sales in 2007 and burger fast food sales accounted for 48% of total sector sales for that year. Sales by commercial foodservice providers were estimated to be US $566 billion in 2009. Commercial foodservice providers account for nearly 91% of away-from-home expenditures in the U.S.
2. U.S. consumers are increasingly trading down from full-service to fast food restaurants. To remain competitive, fast food restaurants are offering more premium menu items, while maintaining a low-price strategy. Hamburgers continue to be extremely popular in the U.S. Hamburgers accounted for 14% of all restaurant orders or 8.7 billion servings from fast food to fine dining restaurants in 2007.
3. According to Euromonitor, one of the fastest growing sub-sectors within the fast food market is Asian fast food chains. The rapid expansion of chains such as Panda Express and Noodles & Co. has fuelled growth. Chinese and Japanese chain outlets are experiencing growing popularity in the U.S., and Thai, Indian and Vietnamese restaurants are expected to see strong growth.
4. Pizza Hut is the world's largest pizza restaurant company and is owned by Yum! Brands the parent company of A&W Restaurants, KFC, Long John Silver's and Taco Bell. Pizza hut are the world's largest user of cheese. Over the course of a summer it is estimated that Pizza hut uses a 100 million pounds of cheese and uses more than 300 million pounds of cheese annually. Pizza Hut purchases more than 3 percent of all cheese production in the United States which requires a herd of about 170,000 dairy cows to produce. They also use 700,000,000 pounds of pepperoni and 525,000,000 pounds of tomatoes in one year.
5. Subway was started by a college student named Fred DeLuca and a family friend by the name of Dr. Peter Buck. DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from his business partner and together they started what would become the biggest sandwich shop in America. Fred DeLuca is still the president of the company.Subway has 3,3585 restaurants in 92 countries and is set to take over McDonald's for most restaurants globally.

Top 5 facts sources: a) Market Analysis Report: "Consumer Foodservice United States", Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, International Markets Bureau, February 2010. B) Euromonitor International. C) Entrepreneur's Franchise 500.