McDonald's

McDonald’s Corporation is the most widely distributed restaurant brand in the world by location count, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under MCD and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. No controlling shareholder exists, with a broad institutional and retail investor base. CEO Chris Kempczyk, who joined from Hilton Hotels in November 2024 following the departure of Chris Kempczyk after an internal conduct investigation, now leads the company. Global system-wide sales across all McDonald’s locations, franchised and company-operated, reached approximately $125 billion in fiscal year 2024.

Ray Kroc began building the McDonald’s franchise network in 1955 after licensing the system from brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, who had opened their original drive-in in San Bernardino, California in 1940. Kroc’s foundational contribution was the franchise architecture: standardized operations manuals, a training system (Hamburger University, founded 1961), a supply chain that treated franchise operators as customers for calibrated inputs, and a real estate strategy that had McDonald’s Corporation own the land under franchised restaurants rather than ceding that value to operators. Approximately 95% of all McDonald’s locations worldwide are operated by franchisees. FY2024 revenues at the McDonald’s Inc. parent company level reached approximately $25.6 billion, with the bulk derived from franchise royalties, rents, and owned restaurant operations. The menu is localized by market to a degree unusual in QSR: the McArabia in the Middle East, the Ebi Burger in Japan, the Maharaja Mac in India, and the Prosperity Burger across Southeast Asia are among the most tracked regional adaptations. The $5 Meal Deal value campaign launched in the US in mid-2024 addressed consumer traffic pressure and drove same-store sales recovery through the latter part of the year.

Across the Malls.com network, McDonald’s is tracked at US Class A++ positions including Tysons Corner Center and City Creek Center in Salt Lake City, at Stanford Shopping Center, Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, and approximately three dozen additional US mall food court and standalone positions. Israeli tracked positions include Azrieli Center Tel Aviv, Ofer Ramat Aviv Mall, Seven Stars Mall in Herzliya, and TLV Fashion Mall. Additional tracked international positions span Qatar, Thailand, India, Japan (AEON MALL Okinawa Rycom), Estonia, and Australia.

For mall operators, McDonald’s is a food court and freestanding restaurant anchor with few equivalents in terms of traffic conversion: the brand’s combination of accessible price points, brand recognition across all demographics, and the operational efficiency of its franchise model makes it a reliable traffic anchor in virtually every mall context. In the US, the typical McDonald’s mall food court location occupies 800 to 2,000 square feet as an inline food court tenant, while freestanding pad sites adjacent to power centers and retail parks can reach 3,500 to 4,500 square feet with drive-thru infrastructure. In international mall contexts, the brand serves as a destination food court anchor that generates consistent weekday and weekend foot traffic across all demographic groups.