McDonald’s is the most written about restaurant company on earth and somehow most of what circulates about it is wrong. The burgers are said to contain no meat. The coffee lawsuit is told as a story about a woman who sued because her coffee was hot. The ice cream machine is treated as a running joke rather than a documented engineering and copyright problem.

Here is what is actually true, with sources. Prices, calories, breakfast hours and the deals are on the McDonald’s menu, so none of that is repeated below.

Why is the McDonald’s ice cream machine always broken?

Two things, neither of them staff laziness. The Taylor machines run an automated four hour pasteurisation cycle that locks the machine out if it fails partway, and software locks meant franchisees could not legally repair their own machines until a copyright ruling in October 2024. Around 15 percent are down nationally at any moment, rising to 32 percent in New York.

Who founded McDonald’s, and who owns it now?

Ray Kroc did not found McDonald’s. Richard and Maurice McDonald did, in San Bernardino, California, and they invented the thing that made it work: the Speedee Service System, a kitchen laid out like an assembly line that could produce a burger in seconds rather than minutes. That system is the actual innovation behind every fast food restaurant that has existed since.

Ray Kroc was a milkshake mixer salesman who visited in 1954, saw the operation, and signed on as the brothers’ franchising agent. He built the chain out nationally, fell out with them over control, and bought them out in 1961 for $2.7 million. The brothers were also promised an ongoing royalty on a handshake, which was never put in writing and never paid.

Today McDonald’s Corporation is a public company trading on the New York Stock Exchange under MCD, owned by ordinary institutional and retail shareholders. Around 44,000 restaurants operate in more than 100 countries, about 13,800 of them in the United States, and roughly 95 percent are run by independent franchisees rather than by the company.

Is McDonald’s really a real estate company?

Substantially, yes, and this is the part of the business almost nobody outside the industry understands.

The model was designed by Harry Sonneborn, an early McDonald’s executive, and his line about it has become famous: the company is not in the food business, it is in the real estate business. McDonald’s Corporation buys or leases the land and building, then leases it to the franchisee. The franchisee pays rent on top of a royalty on sales and a marketing contribution.

The consequence is that McDonald’s income is unusually durable. A franchisee can fail, be replaced, and the corporation keeps the site and the income, while the property appreciates regardless of how many burgers were sold on it.

How much does it cost to open a McDonald’s?

Roughly $1.47 million to $2.8 million in total investment plus a $45,000 franchise fee, with around $500,000 required in liquid capital that has not been borrowed. McDonald’s also almost never approves a first time operator for a brand new restaurant.

Is McDonald’s beef real?

Yes. The patties are 100 percent beef with no fillers, binders, extenders or preservatives added to the meat itself. Salt and pepper go on during cooking and nothing else.

The persistent rumours about worms, pink slime or filler have no basis, and the pink slime story in particular attached itself to McDonald’s after the company had already stopped using the ammonia treated beef trimmings it referred to. The reason a McDonald’s patty tastes different from a homemade one is thickness, cooking method and the fact that a quarter pounder patty is seared on a flat top to a set time rather than grilled to taste.

The one genuine nuance is on the smaller patties. Quarter Pounders are cooked from fresh beef to order, while the thinner patties used in the hamburger, cheeseburger and McDouble are cooked from frozen in batches. Same beef, different handling.

What is actually in a Chicken McNugget?

White boneless chicken, ground and formed into four shapes named the ball, the bell, the boot and the bow tie, with a marinade, batter and breading. All four are cut to the same width so every piece cooks in the same time. The pink paste photograph that circulates shows a different product from a different company.

Why do McDonald’s burgers not rot?

Because they dry out before they can go mouldy. Mould needs moisture, and a thin patty cooked at high heat sitting in a dry bun in dry air loses water faster than anything can establish itself. It is not preservatives, it is surface area and water.

What was the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit actually about?

It is the most successfully misrepresented court case in American history, and the real facts are not close to the version most people know.

In 1992 Stella Liebeck, aged 79, was a passenger in a car that was parked, not moving. She put a cup of McDonald’s coffee between her knees to add cream and sugar and it spilled.

Coffee at 180 to 190 degrees causes third degree burns in under three seconds, and McDonald’s had roughly 700 previous burn complaints on file without changing the temperature. The version where a greedy woman won millions for spilling her own coffee was promoted during the tort reform campaigns of the 1990s.

What was the McDonald’s Monopoly scandal?

For twelve years, essentially nobody won the big prizes fairly, because one man was stealing every one of them.

Jerome Jacobson was head of security at Simon Marketing, the agency McDonald’s used to run the Monopoly promotion. His job was to safeguard the winning game pieces in transit. Instead he took them, from roughly 1989 to 2001, and passed them to a network of family, friends and associates who claimed the prizes and kicked back a share.

The total value taken was around $24 million, more than 50 people were convicted, and McDonald’s was a victim rather than a participant. During those years the top prizes were genuinely unwinnable by ordinary customers.

What happened to Super Size?

McDonald’s announced the phase out in March 2004, citing menu simplification, weeks after Super Size Me premiered. The sizes underneath did not go down, so the absolute largest portion went away while everything else stayed where it was.

What is the McRib and why does it keep disappearing?

A restructured pork patty pressed into the shape of a slab of ribs, sauced, and served on a roll with onions and pickles. It contains no bone and never has. It was created by chef Rene Arend, who also developed the McNugget, and it launched in 1981.

It disappears partly because pork trimming prices swing through the year and partly because scarcity is the marketing. A sandwich that vanishes for a year generates hunting campaigns and news coverage that permanent availability would destroy.

Does McDonald’s have a secret menu?

Not an official one. Staff are not trained on named secret items and most kitchens will look blank if you ask for something by an internet nickname.

What actually works is asking for a normal item built differently, because the kitchen has all the components anyway. Ordering a burger with a different sauce, asking for a Big Mac with a Quarter Pounder patty, requesting a McChicken added inside a McDouble, or asking for fries cooked fresh with no salt, are all things a kitchen can do. They are usually charged as the base item plus the extras rather than at a special price.

Why did McDonald’s fries change, and are they vegetarian?

Until 1990 the fries were cooked largely in beef tallow. The switch to vegetable oil under pressure over saturated fat cost them their flavour, so natural beef flavouring was added back at the plant. That is why they are not vegetarian in the United States but are in the United Kingdom.

Why are the colours red and yellow?

Because they work on hungry people in cars. Red and yellow are the two most visible colour combinations at distance and at speed, which matters enormously for a business built around drivers spotting a sign from a highway.

The colour psychology argument, that red stimulates appetite and yellow signals speed and cheerfulness, gets repeated constantly and is largely marketing folklore dressed up as science. The visibility argument is the solid one. Nearly every major fast food chain uses red, yellow or both, and they are not all following the same research, they are all solving the same problem of being seen from a road.

McDonald’s has quietly moved a number of restaurants to muted greys, browns and dark greens in recent remodels, which is a deliberate attempt to look less like a fast food chain and more like a cafe.

Who is Grimace, and what is he supposed to be?

Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained him, including McDonald’s.

He started life in 1971 as the Evil Grimace, a villain with four arms who stole milkshakes. He was redesigned almost immediately into a friendly purple character with two arms because children found the original frightening. What species he is has never been officially settled. A former McDonald’s executive once described him as an enormous taste bud, which is the closest thing to an answer that exists and was not a formal company position.

He had a substantial commercial second life in 2023 when the Grimace Birthday Shake became an internet phenomenon, which is a striking outcome for a character whose defining feature is that nobody knows what he is.

Is McDonald’s the biggest restaurant chain in the world?

By revenue and brand value, comfortably yes. By number of locations, no, since Subway has historically operated more outlets. Those two measures answer different questions, and store count describes how cheap a format is to replicate rather than how large the business is.

Common McDonald’s Questions

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