McDonald's Race to 50,000: Inside the Biggest Expansion Bet in QSR History

McDonald's has operated at roughly 40,000 locations for most of the past decade. The number moved gradually: up a few hundred one year, flat the next, occasionally down during portfolio rationalization stretches. Then, in late 2023, the company announced something that broke that pattern entirely: more than 8,000 new restaurants in roughly two years, targeting 50,000 total locations worldwide by the end of 2027.

That is not a modest goal. That is the fastest two-year unit expansion in the company's 70-plus-year history.

As of the end of 2025, McDonald's operated approximately 42,000 restaurants globally. To hit 50,000 requires opening net new units at a pace the brand has never sustained. The company plans roughly 2,200 net new locations in 2025 and a similar rate in 2026, with capital expenditure guidance of $3.7 billion to $3.9 billion for the current fiscal year. Most of that investment goes toward development. At full execution, the incremental annual revenue gain is projected at $300 million to $500 million.

For operators, investors, and the franchisees who will be asked to fund much of this growth, the plan raises a direct question: is this disciplined expansion or an aggressive bet that strains the system?

Q4 2025 Sets the Stage

The financial case for acceleration rests on a genuine recovery. McDonald's Q4 2025 earnings, reported in February 2026, showed U.S. same-store sales growth of 6.8%, well ahead of Wall Street's 3.9% estimate. International operated markets posted 5.2% comp growth; international developmental licensed markets added 4.5%. System-wide, net revenue climbed 10% to $7 billion, with earnings per share of $3.12 beating estimates of $3.03.

The Grinch Meal, a Monopoly promotion, and the ongoing McValue platform drove traffic back to positive territory after a rocky stretch through much of 2024. The company entered 2026 with real momentum, and used the results to reinforce the case that opening 2,600 new restaurants this year is the right move.

"Our results demonstrate that we're on the right path," CEO Chris Kempczinski said on the Q4 call. The company expects its new restaurant openings to support roughly 2.5% systemwide sales growth from unit expansion alone, excluding currency effects.

The China Engine

The most consequential piece of the growth story sits in East Asia. China is McDonald's single largest development market, and the numbers there are staggering by any QSR standard.

McDonald's opened more than 1,000 new restaurants in China in 2025. It plans to open another 1,000-plus in 2026. As of the end of 2025, McDonald's operated over 7,740 locations in China, up from a fraction of that count just six years ago. The company is targeting 10,000 Chinese restaurants by 2028.

That trajectory means China alone could account for more than a quarter of all new McDonald's units opened globally over the next two to three years. The market is operated through a joint venture with state-owned CITIC and Carlyle Group, a structure that allows McDonald's to scale rapidly with local capital while retaining brand standards. The model insulates McDonald's corporate balance sheet from the full capital burden of a thousand-unit annual buildout.

The growth logic in China is different than in the U.S. McDonald's is still a premium aspirational brand in many Chinese markets, and lower-tier cities, those outside the coastal mega-markets, represent genuine untapped density. The company is essentially running two separate growth strategies simultaneously: mature market optimization in the West, greenfield penetration in Asia.

The US Plan: 900 New Locations by 2027

The domestic picture is less dramatic but still operationally significant. McDonald's plans to open approximately 900 new U.S. restaurants between 2025 and the end of 2027. That averages roughly 300 per year, a meaningful acceleration from recent years, though modest compared to the China buildout.

The U.S. expansion is concentrated in suburban and exurban markets where population growth supports new demand without direct cannibalization of existing stores. McDonald's has been careful to say publicly that site selection is disciplined. But critics, including some franchisees, have long argued that any new U.S. opening within a few miles of an existing location transfers sales rather than creates them.

Cannibalization is a legitimate concern at this scale. The company's own 2023 investor day materials acknowledged that new restaurants in saturated markets can erode same-store sales at nearby units. McDonald's response is that the development pipeline targets underserved trade areas. That claim is testable, and franchisees will be watching the sales impact on existing stores closely.

For context, there were already over 13,500 McDonald's locations in the United States as of the end of 2025. Adding 900 more into that footprint is a 6.6% unit increase. Execution depends heavily on franchisee capital availability and willingness.

Who Pays: Franchise Economics and Capital Structure

McDonald's is approximately 95% franchised. That means the $1 million to $2.2 million buildout cost for a typical new U.S. location falls primarily on franchisees, not on McDonald's corporate. The company requires $750,000 in non-borrowed personal liquid capital before any franchisee can enter the development queue, plus a $45,000 franchise fee and an estimated $100,000 in working capital per restaurant.

The training commitment alone (a 12 to 18 month program before a franchisee can purchase a restaurant) means the pipeline for new operators is long. To open 8,000 net new restaurants, McDonald's needs to recruit and qualify hundreds of new franchisees while simultaneously ensuring existing operators have capital for additional units.

The challenge is that franchisee sentiment coming into 2026 is not uniformly positive. The 2024 value war, the period when McDonald's pushed heavy discounting to recover traffic, compressed margins at some locations. Operators who stretched capital to fund remodels under the "Best Burger" program in 2024 and 2025 may have limited appetite for new unit development in the near term. McDonald's is leaning on existing multi-unit operators, the cohort of franchisees who already run dozens of locations, to absorb a large share of new openings.

For international developmental licensed markets, the structure is different. Local JV partners and master licensees fund their own development. That is why the 1,800-plus units planned for international developmental licensed markets in 2026 require almost no corporate capital from Oak Brook.

The Drive-Thru Arms Race

One of the most consequential sub-stories inside the expansion plan is the simultaneous overhaul of 27,000 existing drive-thru locations. McDonald's has committed to revamping these lanes with multi-lane configurations and AI-powered tools, developed through a strategic partnership with Google Cloud.

The Google Cloud initiative deploys connected kitchen equipment, AI-enabled order verification systems, and generative AI tools for restaurant management across the system. The company is testing AI-driven scales that weigh outgoing bags before they reach customers, a direct response to the accuracy problem that has dogged drive-thru performance for years. AI chatbots are being piloted at drive-thru windows in select markets, with broader deployment slated for 2026 and full U.S. coverage targeted by 2027.

The scale of this tech deployment is worth appreciating separately from the new unit count. McDonald's is not just building 8,000 new restaurants. It is simultaneously retrofitting 27,000 existing lanes with new hardware and AI software. Both are happening at the same time. The operational load on restaurant teams, field operations, and tech integration partners is substantial.

New restaurants are being built to a streamlined "experience-led" design standard that incorporates digital ordering, mobile pickup lanes, and more efficient kitchen throughput from the ground up. These units carry a lower operational friction cost than retrofitted older locations, which may give new openings a unit economics advantage over the legacy estate.

The Real Estate Competition Problem

McDonald's is not expanding in a vacuum. The same prime drive-thru corridors that McDonald's development teams are targeting are also being targeted by Raising Cane's, Chick-fil-A, and Wingstop, all of which are in aggressive expansion phases.

Raising Cane's opened nearly 100 new locations in 2025 and plans another 100-plus in 2026. The chain is pushing into urban markets and suburban drive-thru sites with formats that require similar land footprints to McDonald's. Chick-fil-A is privately held and does not disclose unit counts, but cap rate data tells part of the story: Chick-fil-A net lease properties saw investor demand push cap rates down 30 basis points in recent quarters, a sign of intense competition for prime sites. McDonald's net lease cap rates, by contrast, hit 4.39% in Q1 2025, the highest since 2018, signaling declining investor enthusiasm relative to the chicken chains.

This matters for site acquisition costs. When multiple well-capitalized chains compete for the same high-traffic outparcels, prices go up and favorable long-term lease terms become harder to secure. McDonald's has the brand heft and balance sheet to win most of these contests. But the cost of winning has risen, and that flows through to franchisee buildout economics.

Wingstop's smaller footprint, averaging around 1,700 square feet, actually gives it flexibility McDonald's lacks. It can fit into strip center end-caps and inline spaces that don't work for a full drive-thru format. That is a different competitive dynamic, but it still consumes the pool of available operators and real estate attention in the markets McDonald's cares about most.

250 Million Loyalty Members as the Parallel Bet

The physical expansion does not run alone. McDonald's has set a parallel goal of 250 million loyalty program members by 2027, up from 175 million at the end of 2025. The loyalty program is central to the company's ability to drive repeat visits, personalize offers, and reduce its dependence on system-wide discounting.

The math is direct: loyalty members visit more frequently and spend more per visit than non-members. If McDonald's hits 250 million members by 2027 while simultaneously adding 8,000 new restaurants, the systemwide sales trajectory gets significantly easier to defend. The new units bring new trade area coverage; the loyalty platform converts occasional visitors into high-frequency guests regardless of location.

Both bets require the same underlying infrastructure: Google Cloud, AI personalization, connected POS systems. The technology investment is not just for drive-thru accuracy. It is the foundation for a digital relationship with customers at scale.

The Risk Scenarios

No serious analysis of this plan skips the downside. There are three risk scenarios that operators and investors should be watching.

The first is consumer spending. McDonald's Q4 2025 recovery was real, but the macro environment heading into 2026 is uncertain. Food-away-from-home inflation has consistently outpaced grocery prices since 2022, and lower-income consumers, McDonald's heaviest-traffic cohort, have been showing spending fatigue. If traffic softens in 2026 while the company is opening hundreds of new units, the new restaurants will underperform their pro forma assumptions and franchisees will feel the pain before corporate does.

The second is execution capacity. Opening 2,200-plus net new restaurants per year while overhauling 27,000 drive-thrus simultaneously requires a supply chain, construction pipeline, and field operations team capable of running two large programs in parallel. McDonald's has done this before at smaller scale. Whether the organization can sustain it for two full years without material quality lapses is an open question.

The third is franchisee capital. The math of 8,000 new restaurants assumes hundreds of franchisees can write $1 million-plus checks over the next 18 months, on top of whatever they spent on remodels and value-war margin compression in recent years. If franchisee capital availability is tighter than the corporate development team believes, the unit count target is at risk, and the company does not have the appetite to build company-owned units at that volume.

The Verdict

McDonald's has earned the right to be aggressive. The Q4 2025 results were strong. The China joint venture provides a capital-light path to thousands of new units. The Google Cloud partnership is real and substantive, not a press release. The loyalty platform is growing.

But the 50,000 store target by the end of 2027 is the boldest development bet McDonald's has made in a generation. Every number in the plan (8,000 new units, 900 U.S. openings, 1,000 China openings per year, 2,600 units in fiscal 2026) requires near-perfect execution across a global system that already runs at extreme scale.

The franchisees who sign leases and write checks to fund the U.S. portion of this expansion will determine whether the plan succeeds or strains the system. Their willingness to invest, given current margins, real estate costs, and the memory of recent value-war pressure, is the variable that corporate targets and investor presentations cannot fully account for.

McDonald's has done harder things before. It also knows what happens when expansion races ahead of execution.