McDonald's Trivia
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97 free McDonald's trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free McDonald's trivia questions with answers. McDonald's is the most recognisable restaurant on the planet, and its story is stranger than the menu suggests. This quiz follows it from a San Bernardino drive-in with carhops to a company with more than 40,000 restaurants: the brothers who invented the Speedee Service System, the mixer salesman who bought them out, the franchisees who dreamed up the Big Mac, the Filet-O-Fish, the Egg McMuffin and the McFlurry, and the ad agency characters who turned a purple milkshake thief into a mascot. Early questions are the sort anyone who has ordered a Happy Meal can answer; later ones cover the hot coffee lawsuit, the Monopoly fraud, the beef-tallow fries controversy and the one town where the arches are not golden. It suits a family game night, a food round at pub quiz or a marketing class icebreaker. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and reference sources before publishing, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which California city did the McDonald brothers open the original McDonald's restaurant in 1940?
San Bernardino
The brothers opened McDonald's Bar-B-Q in San Bernardino in 1940, on Route 66, after running an earlier hot-dog stand, the Airdrome, in Monrovia with their father.
Q 02What was Ray Kroc selling when he first visited the McDonald brothers in 1954?
Milkshake mixers
The brothers had bought eight of his Prince Castle Multimixers, and Kroc went to see why one stand needed so many.
Q 03Ray Kroc's first franchised restaurant opened in 1955 in which Illinois town?
Des Plaines
Kroc's Des Plaines restaurant opened on April 15, 1955, the date the corporation counts as its founding, though it was in fact about the ninth McDonald's overall.
Q 04For what sum did Ray Kroc buy out the McDonald brothers in 1961?
$2.7 million
Kroc paid $2.7 million in 1961, a figure set so each brother cleared $1 million after taxes; they lost the rights to their own name and renamed their original stand The Big M.
Q 05What was the brothers' streamlined kitchen method, the fast food industry's template, called?
The Speedee Service System
The Speedee Service System, launched in 1948, turned the kitchen into an assembly line: the brothers fired their 20 carhops, swapped plates for paper and bags, and slashed the menu to a handful of items.
Q 06What did McDonald's original mascot, a winking chef from 1948, have for a head?
A hamburger
The 1948 mascot was a winking chef with a hamburger for a head, used on signs and ads; the Golden Arches replaced him as the logo in 1962, a year before Ronald McDonald.
Q 07Who first sketched the two yellow arches that became McDonald's Golden Arches?
Richard McDonald
Richard McDonald drew the rough sketch; several architects wanted to drop the arches before Stanley Meston agreed to build two 25-foot neon-trimmed arches, first seen on the 1953 Phoenix franchise.
Q 08The Big Mac was invented by franchisee Jim Delligatti and first sold in 1967 in which Pennsylvania town?
Uniontown
Delligatti's Uniontown restaurant sold the first of the double-decker burgers in 1967; he admitted he had simply copied the Big Boy, and the sandwich went national in 1968.
Q 09Which of these was a rejected early name for the Big Mac?
The Aristocrat
The Aristocrat and the Blue Ribbon Burger were both tried and dropped; the winning name came from Esther Glickstein Rose, a 21-year-old advertising secretary at headquarters.
Q 10In the 1974 jingle, a Big Mac's patties, sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions sit on what?
A sesame-seed bun
The 1974 jingle lists 'two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun'; the special sauce resembles Thousand Island dressing.
Q 11The Economist uses the price of which McDonald's item to compare the buying power of world currencies?
Big Mac
The Big Mac Index, introduced in 1986 by The Economist's Pam Woodall, compares Big Mac prices as a light-hearted gauge of purchasing-power parity and coined the term 'burgernomics'.
Q 12Ray Kroc's meat-free rival to the Filet-O-Fish was a grilled slice of what?
Pineapple
The Hula Burger put pineapple and cheese on a cold bun; the fish sandwich 'won hands down' and was nationwide by 1965.
Q 13The Egg McMuffin, invented in 1972 by Herb Peterson, was designed to resemble which breakfast dish?
Eggs Benedict
Herb Peterson modelled the Egg McMuffin on Eggs Benedict, swapping hollandaise for a slice of cheese and cooking the egg in a ring mould to make it perfectly round; Ray Kroc liked it enough to put it on menus chain-wide.
Q 21The Quarter Pounder was created in 1971 by franchisee Al Bernardin in which city?
Fremont, California
His slogan was 'Today Fremont, tomorrow the world', and it went national in 1973.
Q 22The McFlurry was invented in 1995 by a franchisee in which country?
Canada
Franchisee Ron McLellan's store in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada, sold the first McFlurry in 1995; its hollow-handled spoon attaches to a blender spindle so the toppings are mixed in the cup.
Q 23The McCafé coffee-shop concept was created by McDonald's in which country in 1993?
Australia
It began in Melbourne, and locals there call the chain Macca's, a nickname it has used in official Australian branding.
Q 14According to McDonald's, Chicken McNuggets come in four shapes: the ball, the bell, the boot and what?
The bow tie
The bow tie, also called the bone, completes the set of four; René Arend, the company's first executive chef and a native of Luxembourg, created the McNugget recipe that went national in 1983.
Q 15The McRib, introduced in 1981, is made from what meat?
Pork
The McRib patty is restructured boneless pork shoulder pressed into the shape of a tiny rack of ribs; unlike the US, where it appears only in limited runs, Germany has kept it on the menu year-round.
Q 16Since the 1980s, what flavour has McDonald's March-only Shamrock Shake been?
Mint
The Shamrock Shake has been mint-flavoured since 1983; the 1970 original used lemon-lime sherbet, and by 1973 it was just a vanilla shake dyed green.
Q 17Proceeds from Shamrock Shakes helped fund the first Ronald McDonald House in 1974, in which city?
Philadelphia
Eagles player Fred Hill's daughter Kim was being treated for leukaemia; the team, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and local McDonald's operators, who donated Shamrock Shake proceeds, funded the house in 1974.
Q 18Until 1990, McDonald's fries in the US were cooked mainly in what?
Beef tallow
Until 1990 the fries were cooked mostly in beef tallow; the switch to vegetable oil followed ads by heart-attack survivor Phil Sokolof, and in 2002 the chain paid $10 million to settle suits over undisclosed beef flavouring.
Q 19The Happy Meal went national in the US in which year?
1979
The Happy Meal rolled out nationally in June 1979 with a circus-wagon theme; its first film tie-in, that December, was a Star Trek Meal promoting Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Q 20The Happy Meal grew out of a 1970s 'Ronald Menu' created by a franchisee's wife in which country?
Guatemala
Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño, whose family ran McDonald's in Guatemala, bundled a burger, small fries and a sundae as the 'Menú Ronald'; ad man Bob Bernstein later developed the idea into the boxed meal.
Q 24Which television weatherman played the very first Ronald McDonald in 1963 Washington, D.C. commercials?
Willard Scott
Willard Scott, later the Today show's weatherman, had just finished playing Bozo the Clown on Washington's WRC-TV when he created the first Ronald McDonald for local commercials in 1963.
Q 25When Grimace first appeared in 1971, what was he?
A four-armed villain who stole milkshakes
'Evil Grimace' tested badly, so McDonald's removed his extra arms and made him a lovable lump; the company has confirmed he represents a giant taste bud.
Q 26In 1973 the creators of which children's TV show sued McDonald's, claiming McDonaldland copied it?
H.R. Pufnstuf
Sid and Marty Krofft, creators of H.R. Pufnstuf, argued Mayor McCheese copied their Mayor Pufnstuf; they won in 1977, and McDonald's dropped several McDonaldland characters.
Q 27What colour is Ronald McDonald's hair?
Red
Ronald McDonald has a shock of bright red hair, a yellow jumpsuit and red-and-white striped sleeves, a look that has stayed essentially unchanged since the mid-1960s.
Q 28McDonald's management training school awards its graduates a degree in what?
Hamburgerology
Graduates receive a Bachelor of Hamburgerology; the school opened in 1961 in the basement of an Elk Grove Village, Illinois, restaurant with a class of about 15 and has since trained hundreds of thousands of managers.
Q 29In the 1994 hot coffee lawsuit, how old was plaintiff Stella Liebeck when she was burned?
79
Liebeck was 79 when coffee served at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit gave her third-degree burns in 1992; at the 1994 trial the jury found McDonald's 80 per cent responsible.
Q 30After the judge cut the punitive damages, what total did the hot coffee verdict come to?
$640,000
The judge cut the jury's punitive award to $480,000, three times the $160,000 compensatory award, for a total of $640,000; the parties then settled privately for an undisclosed sum.