science

List of countries with McDonald's restaurants

List of countries with McDonald's restaurants is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand List of countries with McDonald's restaurants rather than just read about it. In short: McDonald's is one of the largest chains of fast-food restaurants in the world, with more than 40,000 outlets worldwide. The majority of McDonald's outlets are franchises.

Key takeaways

List of countries with McDonald's restaurants belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect List of countries with McDonald's restaurants to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of List of countries with McDonald's restaurants from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

McDonald's is one of the largest chains of fast-food restaurants in the world, with more than 40,000 outlets worldwide. The majority of McDonald's outlets are franchises. The list of countries follows the company's own calculation and contains several non-sovereign territories. Today, there are over 13,000 McDonald's restaurants in the United States, over 7,700 in mainland China, and over 3,000 in Japan. Its home country and the two largest foreign markets make up more than half of McDonald's stores worldwide. In addition, there are also over 1,600 McDonald's restaurants in France, over 1,500 in Canada and the United Kingdom, almost 1,400 in Germany, over 1,200 in Brazil, over 1,000 in Australia, over 800 in the Philippines and Italy, and over 700 in India. McDonald's has also ceased operations in some countries it previously operated in.

History of global operations

The first McDonald's restaurant was opened in 1940 by Dick and Mac McDonald. However, on 15 April 1955, Ray Kroc launched the first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, featuring a ten-item menu built around a 15-cent hamburger. The company expanded outside the United States beginning in 1967, in Canada as well as the US territory of Puerto Rico. In the early 1970s, within a few short years, McDonald's expanded further overseas by opening stores in Japan, Australia, Western Europe (Netherlands, West Germany, France and Sweden) and Central America (Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador). By this time, there were over 1,600 McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's opened its first restaurant in South America in 1979 in Brazil as well as the first in Southeast Asia in Singapore (followed by the Philippines and Malaysia in the early 1980s). It later expanded into Eastern Europe and the communist world in 1988 (Yugoslavia and Hungary). In 1992 it opened its first restaurant in Morocco, becoming the first in Africa and the Arab World and meaning that McDonald's for the first time had operations in every inhabited continent of the world. Today, McDonald's has operated more than 40,000 restaurants worldwide.

Notable stores The largest McDonald's store in the world is the World's Largest Entertainment McDonald's in Florida. The biggest temporary McDonald's restaurant in the world was opened during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, which was 3,000 square metres (32,000 sq ft) by area. The northernmost McDonald's restaurant in the world is located in Tromsø, Norway (previously held by Rovaniemi, Finland after the restaurant in Murmansk, Russia, was closed in 2022), and the southernmost in the world is located in Invercargill, New Zealand.

Countries and territories with at least one McDonald's outlet

Former locations This is a list of sovereign states around the world in which McDonald's previously operated restaurants.

Planned or military Locations

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with List of countries with McDonald's restaurants

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what List of countries with McDonald's restaurants claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to List of countries with McDonald's restaurants before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about List of countries with McDonald's restaurants ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of List of countries with McDonald's restaurants

In research: List of countries with McDonald's restaurants appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses List of countries with McDonald's restaurants in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: List of countries with McDonald's restaurants is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Lists of countries, Lists of fast food restaurants, McDonald's, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for List of countries with McDonald's restaurants outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study List of countries with McDonald's restaurants in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what List of countries with McDonald's restaurants means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
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Frequently asked questions

What is List of countries with McDonald's restaurants in simple terms?

McDonald's is one of the largest chains of fast-food restaurants in the world, with more than 40,000 outlets worldwide. The majority of McDonald's outlets are franchises.

Why does List of countries with McDonald's restaurants matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study List of countries with McDonald's restaurants?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on List of countries with McDonald's restaurants.