The Largest Restaurant Chain In The US Isn't McDonald's Or Starbucks

When people joke about a chain having a store on every corner, the butt of the joke is usually Starbucks or McDonald's, but neither one is actually the country's largest chain restaurant. Of those two, Starbucks is the bigger one, having almost 17,000 stores in the U.S. at the end of 2024. Despite that McDonald's has it beat in total sales, pulling in over 70% more revenue despite having 3,000 fewer locations. But neither store can match the footprint of the country's number one chain: Subway.

As of the end of 2024, Subway has 19,500 locations in the U.S., 2,500 more than second-place Starbucks. So why don't people think of Subway the same way as those two? It's probably a combination of Subway's recent struggles and the fact that individual locations do far less business. Despite being number one in stores, Subway is only 9th in the U.S. in total sales for chain restaurants. It does only 20% of McDonald's sales, despite having 6,000 more locations. It does only a third of the sales Starbucks does. So while Subways are everywhere, they don't play as big a role in people's lives.

And Subway has been shrinking. It used to be much farther ahead, peaking at around 27,000 locations in 2015. It has expanded overseas, but in the U.S. it has closed stores every year for the last ten years, with the Covid pandemic hitting it particularly hard. But that was far from Subways only problem over the last decade.

The reasons Subway got to number one are also a big reason why it's been shrinking. Two things propelled its massive growth in the 90s and 2000s, its association with healthy eating, driven by its massively successful ad campaign featuring Jared Fogel, and an aggressive franchising strategy. In 2015 Subway was stained when its ad star Fogel was arrested, and the rise of new rivals like Jersey Mike's that are perceived to have higher quality sandwiches also started cutting into its domination of the market.

At the same time, the aggressive franchising led to a massive glut of stores. Locations were far too close to each other, and were cannibalizing its own business, and franchisees struggled with sales. Something that is still evident in Subway's low per-unit sales, which are less than half of Jersey Mike's. Subway had put expansion ahead of sustainable growth, and the comedown has been fierce.

Over the last few years, Subway has tried to freshen things up, introducing fresh sliced deli meats to counter impressions that the food is poor quality, and experimenting with new menu items like its Subway footlong cookies. But nothing has stopped the slide yet. Subway has had more success internationally, growing to 37,000 locations, with a commitment to add 10,000 more in the coming years. Only time will tell whether that reflects real success, or Subway just repeating the mistakes that have led to so many closures in the U.S.