The Estimated Number Of Big Macs Sold Per Year Far Exceeds The American Population

With 13,865 locations in the United States alone, it's no wonder that McDonald's remains the largest chain restaurant in the country, with sales reaching $54.5B in 2024. It may not be a surprise, then, that the amount of Big Macs sold each year far exceeds the population of the country — it's been widely reported that 550 million are sold annually. The US population is currently at approximately 324 million.

The amount sold may be one of the many facts you didn't know about McDonald's Big Mac. Yet, it's not even the fast food giant's best-selling item– that award goes to its mightily addictive fries. A 2022 report by McDonald's stated that fries were the most ordered menu item in every single US state, followed by the cheeseburger and the McChicken. McDonald's serves roughly 3.6 billion servings of fries per year in the US. Yet, the Big Mac remains arguably the most iconic burger in fast food. Where did it all begin?

We've previously covered how the Big Mac's origin story starts with steelworkers. A McDonald's owner by the name of Michael James "Jim" Delligatti noticed at his Uniontown, Pennsylvania store that plenty of steelworkers would come in at the end of their shifts. The regular cheeseburgers at the time didn't seem to be cutting it for these hungry workers, so in 1965 Delligatti made a case for serving a two-patty burger. It wasn't until 1967 that he was permitted by McDonald's to start selling them, and the following year, the company rolled them out nationwide.

The Big Mac became so popular around the world that in 1986 "The Economist" introduced The Big Mac Index as a way to compare worldwide currencies. The popularity of this iconic sandwich has never really slowed down. For real enthusiasts, there's even an official museum in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, dedicated to the Big Mac.