This Best-Selling McDonald's Menu Item Outsells Every Burger And Nugget

Few fast-food brands have achieved the profitable and prolific heights of burger giant McDonald's. As one of the three most popular fast food chains in America, the company's revenue exceeded $20 billion in September over a 12-month period, according to Macrotrends. In its 2025 third-quarter earnings report, McDonald's even saw a sales increase of nearly 4%, at a time when both beef prices and consumer prices as a whole are at decade highs. But surprisingly, the company, arguably best known for its burgers, saw the most sales from its fries. 

The role fries have played in McDonald's success is real, as the company serves 1.6 billion pounds of spuds per year, according to a 2022 report by the fast food titan. This equates to about 3.6 billion orders, well surpassing the number of burgers and nuggets sold each year combined. The sales of fries are part of what has led to the brand's success, with the fries equating to massive profit margins when comparing the price of raw potatoes with the sale price of fries.

As prices continue to rise nation-wide, McDonald's has made efforts to make its food more accessible, aiming to put more savings on the plate in 2025. The company leverages its fries as an easy addition for customers, offering a free Fry Friday, which gives free medium fries out with every purchase on its app. The prices are highly successful, with Freetrade calculating a profit margin of 75-90% on the chip in 2021. However, the price of a fry is regional, with some of the lower prices offered in cheap places worldwide, which are also lively cosmopolitan cities like Budapest, Hungary.

McDonald's fries do come at a social cost. The company's exact recipe falls under trade secret protections, though fry ingredient information is available. What this means is the fast food chain holds the right to be the only seller of its highly-coveted chips. Meanwhile, the price of potatoes in the United States skyrocketed in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those costs have been passed onto consumers. McDonald's has reportedly curtailed these costs by contracting with spud providers like R.D. Offutt Farms. This company, one of the largest potato producers in the nation, was found by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, in a 2019 study, to have contaminated several local streams. Ultimately, McDonald's has continued to profit from its fries, though the cost of these taters comes with its own losses for some consumers.