The Biggest Companies in the World in 2021

Visualizing America’s Most Popular Fast Food Chains

Fast food is big business in America. From national chains to regional specialties, the industry was worth $331.4 billion as of June 2022.

Which fast food brands are currently dominating this space? This graphic by Truman Du uses data from Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Magazine to show the most popular fast food chains across America.

The Most Prevalent Fast Food Chains, by Store Count

Each year, QSR Magazine puts together a report that ranks America’s top 50 fast food chains. It uses a number of metrics to determine this, including total sales (which we’ve covered in a previous article), average-unit volume (AUVs), and growth figures.

For this graphic, Du zoomed in on a specific metric from the report—the number of stores that each fast food chain has across the country. Here are the top 50 chains, and the number of restaurants they each have across America:

Subway takes first place with over 20,000 restaurants across the country—that’s more stores than all the other sandwich chains on the list put together.

Subway’s popularity is reflected in its sales figures, as well—in 2021, Subway generated about $9.4 billion in sales, about double its closest rival Arby’s.

Second on the list is Starbucks, with more than 15,000 stores across America. Despite a rough 2020, the coffee chain managed to turn things around in 2021, making more than $24 billion in sales that year.

The iconic burger joint McDonald’s comes in third, with more than 13,000 restaurants across the country. While the restaurant has fewer stores than Starbucks and Subway, it generated $46 billion in 2021 sales, which is more than Subway and Starbucks combined.

The “Stay in Your Lane” Curse

As the report shows, quick service restaurants are a popular dining option across America, and the successful ones have the potential to generate billions of dollars each year.

However, QSRs are not without their struggles. One difficulty facing fast food chains is the fact they’re often siloed into specific verticals—once a QSR establishes its niche, it can be difficult for that chain to branch out and successfully launch different menu items.

Take McDonald’s McPizza for example, which was launched in the mid 1980s and tested for a decade or so before being widely discontinued by 2000. Various factors contributed to its demise, but one major issue was the pizza’s relatively long cook-time of sixteen minutes.

Innovation in the Fast Food Industry

While fast food restaurants may have difficulty diversifying their menus, there’s still tons of innovation happening in the industry, especially when it comes to optimizing service and cutting wait times for customers.

For example, Starbucks’ mobile order and pay service, which allows customers to order from their phone, has grown 400% over the last five years. And in 2021, the McDonald’s app was downloaded 24 million times.

It’ll be interesting to see what changes in the next decade, as fast food companies continue to invest in their digital offers and tech support.

The Top 100 Most Valuable Brands in 2022

Given the allusive nature of brands, determining a brand’s financial value is a difficult task.

Despite a brand’s intangibility, it’s hard to deny just how effective a strong one can be at boosting a company’s bottom line.

With this in mind, Brand Finance takes on the challenge of identifying the world’s most valuable brands in the world in its annual Global 500 Report. The graphic above, using data from the latest edition of the report, highlights the top 100 most valuable brands in 2022.

Editor’s note: This ranking measures the value of brands, which can be thought of as marketing-related intangible assets that create a brand identity and reputation in the minds of consumers. It attempts to measure this in financial terms, calculating what the brand is worth to the company that owns it. For more information on methodology, calculations, and sourcing, go to the bottom of this article.

A Full Breakdown of the Most Valuable Brands

With an increase of 35% since last year’s report, Apple retains its top spot on the ranking as the world’s most valuable brand, with a total brand value of $335.1 billion.

This is the highest brand value ever recorded in the history of the Global 500 report, which has been published each year since 2007.

As one of the world’s largest tech companies, Apple dominates the smartphone market, especially in the U.S., where more than 50% of operating smartphones are now an iPhone.

Here’s a complete list of the 100 most valuable brands according to the report:

After Apple, coming in a close second is Amazon with a brand value of $350.3 billion. This is not surprising, considering the tech giant has often found itself neck-and-neck with Apple in the rankings, and has even come in first place in previous editions of the report.

One other brand worth highlighting is TikTok. The social media company saw a 215% increase in its brand value year-over-year, making it the fastest-growing brand on the entire list.

Between 2019 and 2021, the platform saw its userbase skyrocket, growing from 291.4 million to 655.9 million in just two years. If this growth continues, TikTok could reach nearly one billion users by 2025, according to projections from Insider Intelligence.

Most Valuable Sectors

Over a third of the brands on the list fall into the tech and services sector. Combined, this category has a brand value of $2.0 trillion.

Media is the second most valuable sector—19% of the top 100 brands fall under the media and telecoms sector, including Google, Facebook, and WeChat.

COVID-19 is partly the reason for this, as media consumption increased throughout the global pandemic. For example, in the first nine months of 2021, Snapchat’s daily usage grew by 77%. Despite increased traction with users, it’s worth noting the company is now feeling the sting as the real world competes for attention spans once again and advertisers begin to ghost the app due to recession jitters.

As pandemic restrictions fade out around the world, and murmurs of a global recession threaten global economic growth, next year’s report could see some big shifts in brand value.

The Geography of Valuable Brands

When looking at where these brands are based, we see that the United States and China account for 75 of the top 100 brands on the ranking. Even more surprising—just six countries make up 95% of the list.

The growth of Chinese companies on the global stage is reflected in this visualization. As a point of comparison, a decade ago, only six Chinese companies made Brand Finance’s Top 100 ranking, and none of them were in the top 30 for brand value.

Interestingly, European countries only make up 13% of the list, which is a testament to just how much Europe’s economic dominance has dwindled over the last few decades.

Back in the 1960s, Europe accounted for nearly a third of the world’s total GDP. But by 2017, it had dropped down to 16%. According to a forecast by the Pardee Center of the University of Denver, the EU’s share of global GDP is expected to drop down to 10% by 2100.

Of course, if history has taught us anything, it’s that a lot can change over the span of a century. How a ranking like this will look in coming decades is anyone’s guess.