One reason QSR is so popular is because it offers good food at a low cost.
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Here, then, are some overarching trends – all taken from WARC’s new Spotlight on the category – about how US QSR brands are navigating a landscape of disintermediation, digital and dazzle. There’s the glitz of its fondness for celebrity partnerships, and the grittiness of a category where “ghost kitchens”, used solely to prepare food for delivery, help drive incremental revenue. US QSR’s scope means the category intersects with just about every marketing trend and concern, from inflation to influencers, data ownership to digital commerce. The top five brands in terms of ad expenditure – McDonald’s, Domino’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and Wendy’s – spent $1.8 billion in 2020, and Americans spent almost $300 billion in the sector in 2021, an amount just about equal to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Colombia.
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White Castle, serving sliders, opened in Wichita, Kansas in September 1921, and is generally seen as the founding member of the category.īut maybe at this juncture, it’s the category’s scale in the US, not its longevity, that should make marketers, no matter the category, pay notice. The category was US-born and is almost 100 years old. When it comes to brand categories, there is probably none more American than quick-service restaurants (QSR), more commonly known as “fast food” to the hundreds of millions of hungry diners – that is, just about everyone – who frequent the country’s hundreds of national and regional chains, and who are gratefully returning to in-store dining after the pandemic, as well as frequently ordering food for delivery, too. This article is part of the March 2022 WARC Spotlight US series, “For QSR brands, a menu of disruption, digital, and dazzle”.