The Best – and Worst – Chain Restaurants in the U.S.

During the economic boom of the 1950s, Americans were working longer hours, and spending more money. Jumping on the opportunity, fast-food pioneers McDonalds and Burger King proved that dining out wasn't just for special occasions, but could be an affordable and time-saving convenience too.

Today, the U.S. has the world's largest fast-food industry, worth more than 387.5 billion dollars. And if the "drive-thru" wasn't convenient enough, a few taps and you can now get your favorite fast food delivered straight to your front door. But does speed, and low prices come at the expense of great taste?

We created a study to find out which chain restaurants serve the best (and worst) food in the U.S., and the best chain restaurants in each state. We considered businesses with four or more restaurants and analyzed the reviews of 161,054 individual establishments. We then graded each chain business out of five using a fair, weighted average.

Key findings:

• Chick-fil-A is the best super-chain (3,059 locations) with a rating of 3.95, beating Five Guys (3.85) and Jersey Mike's Subs (3.76) to the top spot.

• In-N-Out Burger is the best medium-sized franchise (400 locations) with a rating of 4.21, followed by Dave's Hot Chicken (4.11) and Chicken Salad Chick (4.09).

• Acai Republic (27 locations) is crowned the best small franchise with a rating of 4.44, followed by Nautical Bowls (4.39) and Hawaiian Bros Island Grill (4.38).

• West Virginia and California have the country's best chain restaurants (average rating of 3.55), whereas Louisiana has the worst (3.35).

• Taco John's (379 locations) is the worst chain in the study, with a rating of just 2.61.

• Out of 2,589 businesses, Mcdonald's is the 2nd worst rated in the study with an average rating of 2.75 out of five.

Chick-fil-A is the best food super-chain with an average rating of 3.95.

In this study, we've counted any business with four or more locations. But to make the comparisons fairer, we've categorized the results by size: the super-chains (1,000+ locations), the medium-sized chains (100 -1,000 locations), and the small chains ( 4-100 locations).

The 'super-chains' in our study include any chain that has more than 1,000 locations. The names in this category will be familiar to most people, like Subway (20,000+ locations), McDonalds (14,000+ locations) and Taco Bell (7,980 locations). But which of these household names serves up the best quality food?

Chick-fil-A started out in 1961 as one restaurant called 'Dwarf Grill' and today has 3,059 restaurants. Despite being closed on Sundays, promoting fish rather than meat sandwiches during Lent, and stirring controversy with its conservative Southern Baptist values, Chick-fil-A remains a modern success story. And according to our research, it is also the highest-rated super-chain in the U.S.

Beating burger franchise Five-Guys (3.85) and sub sandwich shop Jersey Mike's Subs (3.76), Chick-fil-A is the best-rated super-chain in the U.S. with a rating of 3.95 out of 5.

Completing the top five are Waffle House (3.72) and Seattle coffee giant Starbucks (3.71).

In-N-Out Burger is the best medium-sized chain

Considering the companies with 100-1,000 locations – chains that may not be nationwide but state or regional favorites – 1980s California burger chain In-N-Out wins the top spot with a weighted rating of 4.21. Similar to Chick-fil-A, turn your In-N-Out drinks cup upside down and you will find a Bible citation, a small nod to In-N-Out's big Conservative Christian ethos.

Scooping second place in the mid-sized category is another Californian enterprise: Dave's Hot Chicken. Founded by childhood Armenian-American friends, Dave's Hot Chicken serves up Nashville-style hot chicken to customers in 199 locations. Only established in 2017 with $900 dollars, it places second with a weighted average rating of 4.11 making this chain one to watch.

Coming third is Chicken Salad Chick (4.09) which started as a mission by a home cook in Alabama to find the best chicken salad recipe. After being told her home business was illegal, founder Stacy Brown was motivated to found a restaurant, and Chicken Salad Chick today has 269 locations and counting.

Rita's Italian Ice & Frozen Custard (4.08) and Skyline Chilli (4.02) complete the top five.

Acai Republic crowned the best small franchise

You may not have heard of some of these smaller chains, but to celebrate these somewhat hidden gems – and encourage you to catch a bite if you're in the neighborhood – we've included chains with between 4 and 100 locations. And there's a clear trend across the study too, the quality – and the average score – typically increases as the number of locations decreases.

Sweet-tooths on the East Coast should head to Acai Republic – the best-rated small chain in the study (4.44). Those based elsewhere should head to Nautical Bowls (4.39) for a near-equal offering of healthy, fruity food bowls.

Hawaiian Bros Island Grill – which also supports hula dancing programs– comes third with 4.38 followed by Asad's Hot Chicken (4.36) and LOS TACOS No.1 (4.36) which come joint fourth.

California and West Virginia have the nation's best chain restaurants.

Although the Golden State lays claim to many of the top-rated chains on this list so far, looking at an average of all chain restaurant reviews, West Virginia is just as good. California and West Virginia share the title of state with the best chain food, with an average score of 3.55 out of five.

South Dakota comes third with 3.54 and Pennsylvania and Hawaii come joint 4th with 3.51.

But what are the best chain restaurants in your state? Check out the top three food chains in your state, using our table below:

The top three fast-food options in every state

Taco John's is the worst eatery in the study, with a rating of just 2.61 out of 5.

For many of us, fast-food is a guilty pleasure – so there's nothing worse than being left feeling gross and regretful when the taste misses the mark. If there's a best, then there must be a worst, and right at the bottom of our 2,589-long list is Taco John's, the Midwest's answer to Taco Bell with an average score of just 2.61 out of five.

But super-chain and original fast-food renegade McDonalds is the 2nd worst in the study, with an average rating of just 2.75.

Two burger chains take the unflattering title of 3rd and 4th worst rated, Bobby's Burgers (2.84) and Wahlburgers @ Hy-Vee (2.85). Another big family favorite, Popeyes, which has 3,705 locations, is the 5th worst-rated chain (2.90).

Methodology

A chain is a business with multiple locations engaged in the same kind of business and owned by the same company. A franchise is a type of business that allows individuals to run a store with the same brand and name, but the individual is responsible for daily operations.

Because both chains and franchises are groups of businesses that share the same name, products, and services, we have included both but used the more commonly used word 'chain' across the study.

We scraped the reviews from a total of 161,054 individual restaurants on Google Maps. To provide a fair analysis of chain restaurants in the U.S. we only analyzed businesses with four or more locations – as per this definition of a chain restaurant – and more than 50 reviews.

The average Google rating was recorded for each individual location. The number of reviews was also recorded for each individual location. The location that had the highest volume of reviews is a McDonald's in Florida, with a total of 23,074 reviews at the time of collection in July.

To allow for a fair comparison across eateries regardless of their total review count, we normalized the results by creating a scale between 1-5 to reflect the volume of reviews for a single location. In this case, the eatery with the most reviews (23,074) would score 5 through to the eateries with the lowest number of reviews (50) scoring 1.

To create a weighted average, we took into account both the Google rating (a score of out 5 given by users) and the normalized scale as above. The rating accounted for 90% of our final score, and the normalized scale 10%.

This gave us a final score out of 5 which was not biased towards entities with a high volume of reviews.

Example:

The Varsity restaurant in Georgia has a Google rating of 4.1, and 21,590 total reviews. This restaurant is given a normalized reviews score of 4.68 out of 5 – because 21,590 is towards the very top of the range, which is out of 23,074. The final score is a sum of 90% from the Google rating of 4.1 (3.69) and 10% of the 4.68 score (0.468) totalling a final weighted average score of 4.16 (rounded to two decimal places).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.