Blog
Which is bigger – McDonalds or Subway?
8th March 2011
The answer to that question depends on how you measure size.
According to the BBC Subway is now bigger than McDonalds, on the basis that they had 33,749 sites across the globe at the end of last year, compared with 32,737 for McDonald’s.
The story got me thinking: I bet McDonalds is still the bigger of the two businesses, but how would you measure that?
How about the number of countries each operates in? Subway has restaurants in 95 countries, McDonald’s has restaurants in 117. So now the score is 1-1.
McDonald’s employ 1.7 million people. They made a profit of $1.24bn in the final three months of last 2010 on revenues of $6.2bn. Can Subway beat those numbers?
Subway is a Private Limited Company (Ltd) whilst McDonalds is a Public Limited Company (PLC) so it’s not possible to measure how much each one is worth in terms of market capitalisation......
See what research you can muster to argue this one out. Brand awareness? Number of customers? Outlet floor area?
McDonald’s reply to this story is to argue that they are still growing but are committed to “being better, not just bigger”. Are they right?