No matter how you personally feel about fast food restaurants, there's no denying they are some of the most popular restaurants in all of America. Some might even argue you can tell a lot about someone based on their favorite fast food restaurant. If that's true, then you can certainly make some interesting conclusions about the mentalities and values of different states with this cool map illustrating the fastest-growing chain in each state.
Before you get ready to argue about their results, keep in mind they set up these rules before choosing the winner for each state:
- Each must have at least 40 locations nationwide
- Each must have at least 10 locations statewide
- Increase of at least five stores (except in cases of super-small states)
That being said, I can't attest to the popularity of any restaurants in other states, but the California one seems pretty dead on. I never even heard of Pieology until a few years ago and now it seems they're opening up everywhere.
You can read more about the results over at Thrillist.
It seemed to me like an odd way to do it, since I think most of us would assume number of locations is of which they are referring.