Mapping regional fast food

In 2011, Karl and Carol Hoepfner, a retired Texas couple in their 70s, briefly became internet sensations by dedicating their days to visiting every single Whataburger location in existence. Those were simpler times. After 60 years of slow and steady growth, the Texas-born burger chain boasted 722 locations across 10 states. And, with all due respect to the legendary borders of Texas, nearly 600 of the stores the Hoepfners set out to visit were contained within the Lone Star State.

Fast-forward a decade or so and some strange things have happened to Whataburger and its ilk — the quaint regional chains that have helped define (or defile) the roadscapes and culinary culture in America. These classic, previously slow-moving local outfits are suddenly everywhere, a veritable jumble of french-fried ubiquity. 

Today you can order sweet tea in New York City from the Louisiana-based chicken chain Raising Cane’s, a Southern gravy biscuit from the Carolina chain Bojangles in Burlington, Vermont, or a Chicago-style Portillo’s Italian beef sandwich in Gilbert, Arizona. Indeed, notching a patty melt at each and every Whataburger location in 2024 would demand travel to 16 states, from the Las Vegas Strip to Kansas to South Carolina. It would also require a lot more work. Back in January, Whataburger hit the 1,000-store milestone with gusto — opening two stores in one day, in Oklahoma and Georgia. The chain has plans to go as far northeast as North Carolina in the coming months. 

The explosion of regional chains is part of a curious trend, in which smaller chains, long-time emblems of hyperlocal pride and fixtures on overly sincere fast-food listicles, have grown up and out after decades of staying relatively close to home. In 2011, around the time the Hoepfners were riding the Texas highway in their van, In-N-Out Burger, the Southern California icon, officially broke ground on its first stores in Texas.

Mainly confined to the West Coast until that point, the Texas locations were the first ones east of Arizona for In-N-Out, bringing the beloved cult chain to just shy of 250 locations. The opening-day hype may sound familiar: In-N-Out’s arrival in Dallas inspired lines that extended for two miles and apparently moved one California expat to tears. Texas, it turns out, was just the beginning. In-N-Out Burger now slings Animal-style Double-Doubles and its mediocre fries across 400 locations, including outposts in Boise and Denver, and has even announced a second headquarters to be built in Tennessee. 

Though some diners may literally weep with joy at these rapid-fire expansions, it’s hard to ignore that a certain sense of novelty is being erased. In-N-Out, with its palm-tree motif, seems all but designed for sunshine and open sunroofs, much in the way that a Dr Pepper shake from Whataburger seems like a drink built for wide highways strewn with armadillo carcasses. “If, suddenly, there are In-N-Out Burger locations everywhere, it's not as special,” Jason Aten wrote last year. “If you're used to swinging by the Sepulveda location when you land at Los Angeles International Airport, and eating a Double-Double while watching planes land, it's not quite as special an experience if you can get one on your way home from work.”  

Indeed, the days of landmark regional fast-food chains operating in cosseted semi-obscurity appear to be over. Massholes used to claim Dunkin’ as their own, and now America apparently runs on it. (That includes Yankee-loving New York, which has the highest number of Dunkin’ locations in the country.) 

Culver’s offers another major test case. Like many Midwestern institutions, the Wisconsin chain distinguished itself with the kind of dairyland decadence that marketing executives at Lactaid can only be grateful for. Culver’s opened in the 1980s, serving custards and cheese curds and butter burgers to its Midwestern faithful. By 2011, the company had steadily expanded into 19 states with around 450 stores. But in the past decade or so, Culver’s has supercharged its ranks, more than doubling its store count to over 1,000 and adding seven more states to its roster. “There are so many Midwesterners here that know our name,” Culver’s CEO Craig Culver said of the company’s massive expansion into Florida. All told, its oleaginous spread across the map is pretty impressive, but given that Culver’s operates everywhere but the West Coast or the Northeast, they still remain relatively unknown to many consumers.

Admittedly, the idea that highly standardized and easily replicable businesses are extending beyond their home markets isn’t exactly earth-shattering. But part of what makes the growth of charming, old-fashioned regional chains into omnipresent goliaths so surprising is that, for a long time, many of these companies resisted it. Like Culver’s, the burger chain Five Guys took on a similar trajectory, opening in 1986 and only expanding to five stores in its first 15 years, all within the range of the nation’s capital. Generally, these expansions were spurred by word-of-mouth excitement rather than shareholder frenzy or national media buzz. In the past two decades, though, every US state but Alaska has become home to a Five Guys. More impressive, international criminals and petro-oligarchs alike can now spend the treasure required for dinner at Five Guys locations at The Hague and in Dubai.

At the beating heart of this phenomenon is not only a flurry of investment and technological advances but also a media ecosystem with fewer resources devoted to strictly regional coverage. The story of a younger chain like Shake Shack illustrates how things have changed. After spreading across New York City in the late aughts, the Manhattan-born burger joint scaled up through expansions to other major urban centers first, starting with Miami. Now in 33 states, Shake Shack is undoubtedly national, but less as a symbol of a small outfit that slowly won hearts and stomachs as much as a statement about how national hype can catalyze growth.

For older, humbler regional chains, though, Shake Shack isn’t a realistic blueprint for territorial domination. That model belongs to Chick-fil-A, whose staggering growth is perhaps the biggest story in American dining over the past decade. From a company that once operated only in shopping malls, the Georgia-born chain has pulled a reverse General Sherman, slowly expanding from Atlanta outward before conquering everything in sight.

In 2011, Chick-fil-A reached 1,600 locations in 38 states. Today, the chain has over 3,000 stores in 48 states. More remarkable, in the past decade alone, Chick-fil-A sales have quadrupled; it is now the third-largest fast-food chain by sales, despite still being smaller than most national chains and famously closed on Sunday. 

Ultimately, what Chick-fil-A has had going for it is what several regional fast-food chains still do. The company remains family run and privately held in an era of corporate consolidation. This firm grasp over operations may speak to the consistency that makes it and many other one-time regional chains a top choice in consumer surveys. Of course, waffle fries always help.

Adam Chandler is a journalist based in New York and the author of Drive-Thru Dreams. His next book, 99% Perspiration, will be published in January 2025.