2QUESTION 2 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
43,500
restaurants
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with the US, about 330 million people. How many people per McDonald's? Feels like one for every 25,000. And the US is only about a third of them, so triple it.
- US population
- 330,000,000
- 1 per ~25,000 people
- ≈ 13,000 US
- US ~1/3 of world (× 3)
- ≈ 40,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- U.S. locations
- ~13,600
- Top 4 intl. (China, Japan, France, Canada)
- ~14,000
- Rest of world (110+ countries)
- ~15,900
- Year-end 2024 total
- ≈ 43,500
Reference cited by Fermi: McDonald's 2024 Restaurant Count by Market (10-K filing)
How close was your guess?
Your comparison will appear here.
Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.