The Family-Owned Company That Supplies McDonald's With Its Eggs

Ordering an Egg McMuffin at McDonald's is pretty routine, and most folks do it without a second thought. But behind the curtain is a vast egg empire that's clucking to a very active rhythm. The company behind those endless eggs fueling McDonald's breakfast menu is Cargill, a family-owned business that's been working with McDonald's for many years. And they don't do it alone, not by a long shot. 

Delivering massive quantities of egg products to America's top-selling fast-food chain takes a sprawling network of farms, processors, and distributors who, in 2023 alone, supplied nearly 2 billion eggs to McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Cargill is considered the biggest private company in the U.S., but despite its enormous size, and raking in $154 billion in fiscal year 2026, it remains firmly in family hands. At least 100 members of the Cargill-MacMillan clan own the vast majority of the business, according to Forbes. 

Cargill's partnership with McDonald's became even more important after the restaurant chain announced in 2015 that it intended to serve only cage-free eggs in all its American venues. To say the least, it was a challenge, since cage-free production, which is a different than pasture-raised, meant a complete overhaul by most of its egg-supplying farmers. But they rallied, put in the hard work of transitioning to cage-free housing, and met the goal by 2023. Cargill invested hundreds of millions of dollars of financing to help suppliers make the conversion.

As the fifth richest family in America in 2026, with $67.9 billion in collective net worth, the sixth generation of Cargill-MacMillans are definitely doing something right, at least in a business sense. A longterm McDonald's contract certainly doesn't hurt — but is that all they do? Not by a long shot. 

Eggs are only a sliver of Cargill's presence in the food universe. Its lineup includes familiar names such as Diamond Crystal salt, Honeysuckle White and Shady Brook Farms turkey, Truvia sweetener, Crave House plant-based foods, and Sunny Fresh egg products, along with beef, oils, chocolate ingredients, and numerous supplies headed to restaurants and food manufacturers on a regular basis. So even without knowing it, there's a pretty good chance you've eaten something the family-owned giant helped put on your plate. 

As for McDonald's, it goes big in more ways than one. For cradling those McMuffin breakfast eggs, the English muffins come from the largest bakery in the U.S.  And that bakery's parent company, headquartered in Mexico, is the largest bakery in the entire world. If you're curious about what exactly is in McDonald's eggs, there are actually four forms presenting across the breakfast menu. The Egg McMuffin gets the purest of them all: a freshly cracked real egg cooked in a mold and slid between the halves of the muffin, along with whatever else you've chosen to include in your morning ritual.