The US State With The Most McDonald's Locations Isn't Florida Or New York

McDonald's is the OG fast food giant with more than 44,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries around the world. The U.S. naturally has the largest chunk of them, with just under one-third of the total number (per World Population Review). But which state has the most? As you'd expect, it's one of the biggest. Texas just edges out California with 1,232 locations as of October 2025, to the West Coast state's 1,227 (via ScrapeHero). Florida, home to the world's largest McDonald's, is third with 885 out of the overall U.S. total of more than 13,500.

Texas is ahead of California even though it has 10 million fewer residents. The Lone Star State, which was the inspiration for a McDonald's burger only found in Europe, is also home to the U.S. city with the most Mickey D's, Houston, with 126, and third-place San Antonio with 82 (per ScrapeHero). Chicago, where the iconic burger chain is headquartered, has 102 locations in second place.

McDonald's is advancing with plans it announced in December 2023 to open some 900 new U.S. restaurants by 2027. It's part of the company's push to add a whopping 10,000 locations globally in the same time frame, which would amount to its fastest expansion ever. Once done, the brand may reclaim the crown as the fast food chain with the most U.S. locations – currently held by Subway, whose numbers have been quickly shrinking.

Texas holds a prominent position in McDonald's record-breaking growth plans, which were developed after it closed the same number of U.S. locations, 900 restaurants, from 2015 to 2021 that it now intends to open. Chief Development Officer Tabassum Zalotrawala told Bloomberg in October 2025 that the company hadn't kept up with the growth in Texas' population, which has soared by two million just since 2020, and said that fully one-quarter of the new U.S. locations will be in the Southern state. The brand detailed its big Texas goals in a Bloomberg podcast the same month, saying it's particularly focused on the northern part of the state, where people have been moving in droves.

McDonald's says it seeks out the best places to provide convenience for customers when it looks for new locations. This is done via what Peterson described as sophisticated demographic analysis, likely using geographic information systems, something many fast food chains use to research where to open new outlets. These systems process a range of demographic and geographic data to determine beneficial locations. McDonald's U.K. website names some things that go into choosing new sites, including an area's population, the stores in the vicinity, and the distance to shopping centers. These are all examples of data the systems could process, along with others such as car traffic and safety information.