2QUESTION 2 OF 3
Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
35,000,000
burgers
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with McDonald's restaurants, something like 45,000 worldwide. How many burgers does one sell in a day? Picture about one a minute across a long day, so call it 800.
- Restaurants worldwide
- ~45,000
- Burgers per store per day
- ~800
- 45,000 × 800
- ≈ 36 million
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Restaurants worldwide (year-end 2025)
- ≈ 45,000
- Customers per restaurant per day
- × 1,550
- Beef burgers per customer
- × 0.5
- 45,000 × 1,550 × 0.5
- ≈ 35 million
Reference cited by Fermi: McDonald's corporate: 714 million lbs of US beef (2023), 45,356 restaurants at year-end 2025, about 70 million customers a day
How close was your guess?
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Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.