McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. The brothers' business, which started off as a hamburger stand, soon became the company franchise as it is today. The Golden Arches is now the company's logo, which was introduced in 1953 at a location in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1955, Ray Kroc, a businessman, joined the company as a franchise agent and, in 1961, bought out the McDonald brothers. Previously headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, it moved to nearby Chicago in June 2018. McDonald's is also a real estate company through its ownership of around 70% of restaurant buildings and 45% of the underlying land. McDonald's has over 40,000 international restaurant locations as of 2024 and 13,622 in the United States as of 2025. The restaurants serve in total over 69 million customers daily in over 100 countries. McDonald's is the world's second largest fast food restaurant chain by number of locations, surpassed only by Chinese chain Mixue Ice Cream & Tea as of September 2024. Wikipedia