Tamoco Store Visitation Data: McDonald's vs Starbucks

(1 April 2021) McDonald's and Starbucks are two of the most popular fast-food chains in the United States. California and Texas are the largest markets for both franchises in terms of the number of stores. This is not surprising, since these are the two most populous US states. But looking at the actual number of visits to these two brands — as tracked by Tamoco in August and September last year— gives slightly a different picture:

• California was in 12th place among all states by the number of visits to McDonald's, and in 5th place in trips to Starbucks.
• At the same time, Florida had the highest share of visits to McDonald's (12% of visits in all states) while Texas was the leader for Starbucks (11%).
• Other notable differences between the two chains in terms of the distribution of visits by states are shown in the chart below.
• Variations in COVID restrictions and infection rates between different states during the time period analyzed may be a factor in states' traffic levels.

Note: The figures presented are not the total number of visits but only those tracked through geo-location data from cell phones. Tamoco collects visits by tracking 300 million smartphones worldwide and attributing the geo-location data to over 20 million points of interest to make better sense of how consumers behave in the offline world.