McDonald’s most impressive feat is not that it rose to the top of the fast-food chain; it’s that it managed to stay there.

The chain was founded in 1940, but its true rise to prominence came in the 1970s. It was a simple model based on offering hot food quickly with an experience that was the same no matter where you were.

That model slowly exanded across the United States and eventually around the globe. Whether you’re in Paris, France, or Paris, Texas, a Big Mac and fries served with a Coke will taste exactly the same.

“Our aim was to insure repeat business based on the system’s reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator,” founder Ray Kroc said in his book, “Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s”.

And while rivals Wendy’s and Burger King have been closing restaurants, McDonald’s has an aggressive expansion plan.

“McDonald’s Corporation is accelerating its global expansion strategy with a clear objective: reaching 50,000 restaurants worldwide by the end of 2027. The company views restaurant development as a core pillar of long-term growth, even as the quick-service restaurant industry navigates a challenging consumer environment,” according to Zacks.com.

It’s a growth path that would put McDonald’s on pace to eventually pass Subway as the largest restaurant brand in the world. That’s a title that Subway has held since 2011.

Subway holds the global crown

Subway is the world’s largest restaurant chain by number of locations. The company surpassed McDonald’s in the United States in 2002, but the sandwich chain has now also passed McDonald’s worldwide, according to the USA Today Network.

Subway took the U.S. crown more than 20 years ago and has not given it up.

“The Milford-based chain operates 13,247 stores in the United States, 148 more than McDonald’s as of Dec. 31. Subway, started by Fred DeLuca in 1965, opened 904 units last year, while McDonald’s opened 295,” Fox News reported in Feb. 2002.

Even then, however, McDonald’s was still, in some ways, a bigger brand than Subway.

“The fact that there are more Subway restaurants in the United States may be a boost in visibility, but does not add up to huge financial gains, said Mark Kalinowski, a fast-food analyst with Salomon Smith Barney.

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“If you have a person walking down the street or driving along in their car, they’ll see more Subways. It’s a convenience factor to have a lot of units open. But ultimately, from a financial perspective, it’s not that big of a deal,” Kalinowski said.

In recent years, however, Subway has been moving in the wrong direction.

Subway has been steadily shrinking

Subway has closed roughly one-third of its U.S. restaurants since 2016. The decline started after the 2015 arrest of its long-time spokesperson Jared Fogle on charges of child pornography and sex with a minor.

“United States Attorney Josh J. Minkler announced today the filing of formal charges against Jared S. Fogle for distributing and receiving child pornography, and conspiring to do so, as well as repeatedly traveling to engage in commercial sex acts with underage minors. Fogle, 37, of Zionsville, Indiana, was charged by Information and has notified the U.S. District Court that he will plead guilty to all charges,” according to an FBI press release.

You can’t blame Subway’s decline on Fogle’s arrest, but it was a factor in starting its downturn.

“They have to acknowledge they are in a horrific situation and then pivot back to the fact that the spokesperson’s actions will in no way affect the brand’s dedication to providing customers with a healthy fast-food alternative,” Patrick Hillman, a vice president at Levick Communications, a public relations firm that specializes in crisis management, told Marketing Dive.

The chain immediately cut ties with Fogle when his arrest was made public.

Subway keeps shrinking

Subway’s decline has been steady.

“Subway’s U.S. store count declined for a 10th straight year in 2025 as the brand continues to rightsize its footprint,” according to QSR Magazine.

The chain’s store count has been falling since it hit 27,000 in 2015.

“Between 2016 and 2025, the chain closed a net of 8,345 restaurants — that figure alone would rank among the top five biggest chains in America,” the indiustry publication shared.

Subway store closures by year:

  • 2016: 357
  • 2017: 866
  • 2018: 1,108
  • 2019: 996
  • 2020: 1,601
  • 2021: 1,043
  • 2022: 571
  • 2023: 443
  • 2024: 631
  • 2025: 729
    Source: QSR Magazine
Subway still makes all its sandwiches by hand.

Shutterstock

Why is Subway struggling?

“The simple explanation for this decline is that same-store sales have been falling since 2012, and unit count has followed. The chain has smartly cut back on unit growth while it works to recover those lost sales, and unit closures result in a modestly smaller concept,” wrote Restaurant Business Editor in Chief Jonathan Maze on Nation’s Restaurant News.

Expanding too fast hurt the chain’s franchisees.

“Operators tell me privately that aggressive development over that period cannibalized existing locations and hurt unit economics,” Maze wrote.

That decline reflects more than cyclical pressure, according to industry analysts. It points to a long-running issue with store saturation and franchise profitability.

“Stores that were exceptionally strong five years ago are much weaker now,” one franchisee told Maze.

Subway’s message also grew stale, according to Food Network personality Ali Khan.

“In the early 2000s, Subway’s ‘Eat Fresh’ branding resonated with a health-conscious public in contrast to McDonald’s. Jared Fogle (before his scandal) became the face of its weight-loss marketing. But over time, new fast-casual competitors with an eye on quality like Chipotle and Jersey Mike’s opened the door to a new era of higher quality chain fast food that offered a new option: better fast food (albeit more expensive),” he posted.

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