Monday, August 3, 2015

Chick-Fil-A Restaurants Are The Biggest Money Makers In The Fast Food Business

The food landscape is evolving, and Chick-fil-A is quickly moving ahead of its competitors.

McDonald's and its 12,800 U.S. restaurants still brings in more revenue than any other fast food chain. But Chick-fil-A is pulling in more cash the Golden Arches — and every other big fast food chain — on a store-by-store basis.

In a new ranking of the country's 50 largest fast food restaurants released by QSR magazine on Monday, the average Chick-fil-A restaurant is listed as doing $3 million in sales in 2014, higher than every other restaurant on the list. The average McDonald's made $2.5 million.

In terms of overall revenue, Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A climbed to eighth place, and is now larger than every pizza brand in America, despite having a minimal presence in the Northeast and closing all its stores on Sundays.

Despite expanding to more than 1,900 locations, the chicken chain "has a lot of white space ahead of it — there are still plenty of U.S. markets where Chick-fil-A has yet to open," QSR magazine Editor Sam Oches told BuzzFeed News. "As it continues to expand across the country, I suspect it will continue to grow in leaps and bounds."

Chick-fil-A recently ranked as the most popular fast-food chain in the American Customer Satisfaction Index's Annual Restaurant Survey, followed by Chipotle and Panera.

The fast food landscape is slowly evolving. Here are some of the other changes in the top 10 list of largest restaurants, based on sales volume.