Fast-food businesses are investor favorites. A typical national chain that sells burgers, pizza, or chicken usually has an easy-to-follow business with healthy profit margins. And the best fast-food stocks enjoy huge market potentials thanks to some basic and enduring consumer preferences around taste, value, and convenience.
It's a hard business to succeed in, though, and relatively few companies have what it takes to consistently compete on a national or global scale. Rivals are always seeking to chip away at an industry leader's market share with new products and lower prices.
With those challenges in mind, let's take a look at the fast-food stocks that dominate U.S. public markets today, as ranked by market capitalization, or the total number of a company's shares outstanding multiplied by the stock's market price.