I meant to comment about this earlier: If a #4 company merges with a #5 company, it can become the #1 company, so if #8 merges with #10, it should be higher than #8, not lower. It isn't an average but rather a total of the two.
Begging Frank's indulgence for one moment (and please don't kill this post, because it took some time to type up)---I just found the latest ranking by QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) magazine, so we can finally land on hard numbers and current facts (because those matter). These are the 2020 numbers, published August 2021---next update will be this August.
Burger places only, by USA sales:
1. McDonalds ($40.5 billion--was #1 and $37.4 billion in 2017)
2. Wendy's ($10.2 billion---was #3 and $9.2 billion in 2017)
3. Burger King ($9.6 billion---was #2 and $10.0 billion in 2017)
4. Sonic ($5.6 billion---was #4 and $4.4 billion in 2017)
5. Jack in the Box ($3.6 billion---was #6 and $3.4 billion in 2017)
6. Dairy Queen ($2.9 billion---was #5 and $3.6 billion in 2017)
7. Whataburger ($2.6 billion---was #7 and $2.2 billion in 2017)
8. Hardee's ($2.0 billion---was #8 and 2.1 billion in 2017)
9. Culver's ($1.9 billion---was #10 and $1.4 billion in 2017)
10. Five Guys ($1.7 billion---was #9 and $1.43 billion in 2017)
11. Carl's Jr. ($1.5 billion---was #8 and $1.48 billion in 2017)
12. In-N-Out ($1.1 billion---was #13 and $647 million in 2017)
13. Checkers/Rally's ($854 million---was #12 and $844 million in 2017)
14. Steak 'n Shake ($800 million---was #11 and $939 million in 2017)
15. Freddy's ($643 million---didn't make the cutoff in 2017)
16. White Castle ($565 million---was #14 and $547 million in 2017)
If you bundle Hardees' and Carl's this year, you're at #6. So my apologies to Semoochie.
I'm not quite sure why Hardee's and Carl's went to reporting separately. Looking through QSR, every food item that gets print is something both restaurants are doing.
We forgot DQ before, which admittedly makes a lot of its money from ice cream, but does sell burgers.
Summary: McDonald's is four times as big in sales as the next guy, Wendy's and Burger King are in a serious fight for #2. Sonic's doing half what they are and Jack and Carl's/Hardees' are only doing 60% of Sonic---which is surprising to me.
Everything below that on the list gets hurt by being regional, but In-N-Out damn near doubled its revenue in three years.
(we now return you to obscenity and profanity, already in f&$#ing progress)