The Aloha State is the Mac-daddy when it comes to Golden Arches.
New Jersey boasted the second highest rated McDonald’s branches in the nation behind Hawaii, according to a survey by Restaurant Furniture.
To gauge which regions “serve up the best Golden Arches experience, the restaurant furnishing purveyor examined over 8.7 million customer reviews on Google, encompassing 4,867 McDonald’s branches across the US.
They specifically looked at the top 10 cities in each state, collecting the number of McDonald’s locations and their average ratings, like a high octane electoral college.
Finally, the weighted average of the city-based reviews was used to rank the regions based on the lovability of their McDonald’s
Hawaii dominated the rankings in this fast food nation, scoring a whooping 3.77 based on 68,580 Google reviews across 48 locations.
Many customers have raved about the localized items on offer at the 50th state’s Golden arches, such as the rice and eggs with Portuguese sausage and/or spam.
“For it being McDonald’s, I thought the eggs and rice were so fluffy,” gushed one influencer on Instagram. “The sausage was a little tough to bite into, but the spam was delicious & tender.”
Following close behind on the McDonald’s Mount Rushmore was New Jersey, with an average rating of 3.68 across 94,346 reviews. The Garden State Golden Arches beat out the branches in their neighbor, New York (3.54), whose locations score nearly 4% less on average.
Many customers have cited the inflation-fueled prices at some NY branches, where a large tender meal from can run customers $16.99.
California secured third place with an average rating of 3.65 — an enviable score considering the large sample size of 562,342 reviews.
Rounding out the top five were Connecticut and Idaho, with average ratings of 3.62 and 3.61, respectively.
On the other end of the spectrum, Michigan sat at the bottom of the list for McDonald’s, tallying an average rating of just 3.15 across 185,666 reviews.
It’s yet unclear which exact McDonald’s they reviewed, but there are whole Reddit threads dedicated to the McDonald’s outlets in Grand Rapids.
One critic called a Michigan street location “one of the dirtiest establishments I’ve ever been in.”
Another wrote, “I found half of a dirty fake nail in my fries last summer. I had already eaten half of the fries. I’ll never go back again.”
A third ripped the service at the Division Street satellite, ruing, “Always see workers outside but people are ignored at the drive thru. Takes three cars to get them to come inside.”
Restaurants in Georgia occupied the second lowest rung with a rating of 3.24 across 241,209 reviews.
Ohio, Wisconsin, and South Carolina tied for third worst, each clocking an average rating of 3.25.
As for individual cities, Roswell, New Mexico — home of the iconic UFO-themed Golden Arches — boasted the highest-rated McDonald’s with an impressive average rating of 3.97.
Auburn, Alabama, placed dead last, scoring just 2.86.
In general, Western and Northeastern states generally outperformed their counterparts in the US and the South, the latter of which comprised the lion’s share of the lowest-rated locations.
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