McDonald's operates 13,558 U.S. stores. At a 30-minute drive radius the network reaches 320M Americans — 95.6% of the U.S. population. Average household income of the reached population: $93,382. Median age: 38.7. Working-age population reached: 195M (61.0% of total reach).
Demographic mix of reached population
Age cohort breakdown of the 320M-person trade area at 30-min drive. Numbers are absolute population counts from /api/trade-area.
- 18-24: 29.2M (9.1% of reached pop)
- 25-34: 44.1M (13.8% of reached pop)
- 35-44: 42.0M (13.1% of reached pop)
- 45-54: 39.3M (12.3% of reached pop)
- 55-64: 40.7M (12.7% of reached pop)
- 65+: 53.2M (16.6% of reached pop)
Trade-area overlap with Burger King
McDonald's: 13,558 U.S. stores reaching 320M Americans. Burger King: 6,635 U.S. stores reaching 308M. Pairwise overlap computed at 30-min drive isochrone, H3 resolution 7.
Union of reachable population: 321M (95.8% of U.S.).
Both-chains reach: 308M — 95.8% of union.
McDonald's-only reach: 12.7M — population within 30 min of McDonald's but NOT Burger King.
Burger King-only reach: 763K — population within 30 min of Burger King but NOT McDonald's.
Higher overlap percentage = the two networks compete more directly for the same trade-area population. 95.8% overlap means roughly 95.8% of the jointly-reachable U.S. population can shop either chain within 30 min, which sets the upper bound on customer-share competition between the two.
Methodology
Drive-time matrix. 1.083B routed pairs (origin H3 cell × destination H3 cell × 5/10/15/30/60-min drive). Built on OpenStreetMap U.S. extract via OSRM contraction-hierarchy.
Demographics. U.S. Census ACS 2023 5-year, block-group level, projected onto 12.86M H3 res-8 cells via overlap-weighted area apportionment.
Overlap. overlap_pct = both_pop / union_pop. Computed cell-by-cell with set operations; no smoothing.
What this post does NOT include. Named-MSA whitespace candidates (the platform's whitespace endpoint returns H3 cells with lat/lng, not MSA names). Store-to-store cannibalization inside a single chain (the platform only computes overlap between two distinct chains, not between sibling stores of one brand). Forward-looking unit-growth projections (these come from management guidance, not the platform).