Chick-fil-A Is America’s Favorite Fast-Food Restaurant

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 27, 11:30AM EDT

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Chick-fil-A Is America’s Favorite Fast-Food Restaurant — © Courtesy of Chick-fil-A

Every year, the American Customer Satisfaction Index releases its Restaurant Study. The current version is for 2022-2023. Among its measurements is one of the fast-food restaurants. McDonald’s, the largest company on the list, finished dead last in that ranking. (These companies have the best reputations.)

The research is based on 16,250 respondents and was in the field from April 2022 through March 2023. The study covers both full-service and fast-food restaurants.

The primary yardsticks for fast food were the accuracy of food orders, the company’s mobile app, beverage quality, courteous staff, restaurant layout and quality, cleanliness, variety of food and beverages, and speed of checkout or delivery.

The restaurants were graded on a scale of 1 to 100. The study covered 24 fast-food retailers. Chick-fil-A’s score was 85. It had the best ranking of any company on the list, both full-service and fast-food restaurants. The average score among fast-food restaurants was 78. McDonald’s, the largest company on the list based on revenue, finished last with a score of 69.
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Chick-fil-A is old by fast-food company standards. It was founded in 1946. Most of its 2,928 locations were in the South until recently. Because of the religious beliefs of the founders, its stores are not open on Sunday.
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These are the ratings of America’s fast-food restaurants:

Chick-fi l-A (85)
Jimmy John’s (84)
KFC (81)
Papa Johns (80)
Domino’s (78)
Five Guys (78)
Pizza Hut (78)
Starbucks (78)
Arby’s (77)
Dunkin’ (77)
Panda Express (77)
Burger King (76)
Panera Bread (76)
Chipotle (75)
Dairy Queen (75)
Subway (75)
Little Caesars (74)
Popeyes (74)
Wendy’s (74)
Jack in the Box (73)
Sonic (72)
Taco Bell (71)
McDonald’s (69)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.