Curated playlist

Multinational food companies

McDonald'sIn 1948, the McDonald brothers fired all 20 of their carhops and cut the menu to nine items.
Burger KingBurger King reported 17,796 outlets in 100 countries on the 31st of December 2018. Nearly half of them stood in the United States. Yet in one of those countries, a hungry customer would never see the Burger King name on a sign. The chain…
Taco BellTaco Bell lists 8,212 restaurants, and more than 94 percent of them are owned and run by independent franchisees and licensees. The chain sells Mexican-inspired food such as tacos, burritos, quesadillas and nachos. Its very first…
KFCKFC keeps a copy of its founding recipe, signed by Colonel Harland Sanders, in a safe inside a vault at its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Alongside it sit 11 vials holding the herbs and spices themselves. The company behind that…
Subway (restaurant)Subway began in 1965 with a $1,000 loan between friends. Fred DeLuca borrowed the money from Peter Buck and opened Pete's Drive-In: Super Submarine Sandwiches at 3851 Main Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. As of September 2023, the…
Pizza HutPizza Hut owes its name to a sign that could hold only eight letters. The chain began in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958, when two Wichita State University students, the brothers Dan and Frank Carney, borrowed $600 from their mother. Today the…
UnileverUnilever, the world's largest soap producer, began as a 1930 margarine and soap merger.
StarbucksStarbucks Corporation had 35,711 stores in 80 countries, and 15,873 of them were in the United States. Of the American stores, more than 8,900 are run by the company itself. The rest are licensed to other operators. As of 2022 it ranked…
Mondelez InternationalMondelez International takes its name from two scraps of language. One is the Latin word mundus, meaning world. The other is delez, a shortened echo of the word delicious. The company writes its name with a macron over the second e, and it…
Mars Inc.In Chicago, a commuter rail station bears a single plain name, Mars. It stands beside a candy factory belonging to Mars, Incorporated, the maker of M&M's and Twix. The company is entirely owned by the Mars family. In 2022 it reported US$45…
NestléNestlé began as two rival milk companies in Switzerland. They merged in 1905 after selling in each other's markets.
PepsiCoPepsiCo sells its products across more than 200 countries and territories. As of January 2021-23 of its brands each brought in over 1 billion dollars a year. Only Nestlé ranks ahead of it among the world's food and beverage businesses. Yet…
Kellogg'sThe Kellogg Company, known to shoppers as Kellogg's, traces its origins to a batch of wheat-berry dough that a doctor left behind one night. By 2018 the company made and sold its products in over 180 countries. Its largest factory stood at…
Domino'sIn 1960, brothers Tom and Jim Monaghan took over a small pizza shop at 507 Cross Street in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It stood near Eastern Michigan University, and it was called DomiNick's. A $500 down payment sealed the deal, and the brothers…
The Hershey CompanyThe Hershey Company, based in Hershey, Pennsylvania, produces over 70 million candies every day. Its chocolate is sold in 60 countries, and it ranks among the largest chocolate makers in the world. Yet the company is more than a name on a…
Frito-LayA Texas man borrowed $100 from his mother in 1932 and bought a corn chip recipe. That deal started Frito-Lay.
CargillCargill, Incorporated, headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, employs more than 160,000 people across 66 countries. It is responsible for 25% of all grain exported from the United States, and it supplies about 22% of the American domestic…
The Coca-Cola CompanyCoca-Cola began as a pharmacist's attempt to escape morphine addiction.
HeinzThe H. J. Heinz Company, known to most people as Heinz, owes its most famous number to a sign seen from a train. In 1896, founder Henry J. Heinz was riding an elevated train in New York City when he noticed a shoe store advertising 21…