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.
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Q 01In which California city did the McDonald brothers open the original McDonald's restaurant in 1940?
San Bernardino
San Bernardino's first McDonald's opened in 1940 as a barbecue drive-in; the brothers rebuilt it in 1948 around a short, fast menu, and the site now holds an unofficial museum run by a chicken chain.
Q 02What was Ray Kroc selling when he first visited the McDonald brothers in 1954?
Milkshake mixers
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
$2.7 million was the price the brothers named in 1961; Kroc did not have it and had to borrow the money, and the brothers' original stand, left out of the deal, lost the right to the McDonald's name.
Q 05What was the McDonald brothers' streamlined kitchen method, the fast food industry's template, called?
The Speedee Service System
The Speedee Service System, launched in 1948, ran the kitchen like an assembly line: the brothers let their carhops go and swapped plates and cutlery for paper wrappers, so no dishwasher was needed.
Q 06What did McDonald's original mascot, a winking chef from 1948, have for a head?
A hamburger
A hamburger formed the head of the winking chef on early signs; he gave way to the Golden Arches as the logo in 1962, when McDonald's wanted a more modern image, a year before Ronald McDonald appeared.
Q 07Who first sketched the two yellow arches that became the fast-food chain's Golden Arches?
Richard McDonald
Richard McDonald sketched the arches to make the stand catch the eye; at least one architect balked at them before they went up on the first franchise, in Phoenix, in 1953.
Q 08Franchisee Jim Delligatti created the Big Mac in 1967 at his restaurants around which US city?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh: Delligatti devised it in a suburban kitchen and first sold it in nearby Uniontown, later saying he had simply copied a rival chain's double-decker.
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
A sesame-seed bun closes the 1974 jingle's list; the 'special sauce' it mentions was demystified in 2012, when McDonald's executive chef showed on video how to mix it at home.
Q 11Which pop star sang 'I'm Lovin' It' when McDonald's launched the slogan worldwide in 2003?
Justin Timberlake
Justin Timberlake fronted the ads and released a full-length version as a single; the slogan itself came from a small German agency and made its debut in Munich as 'Ich liebe es'.
Q 12Ray Kroc's meat-free rival to the Filet-O-Fish was a grilled slice of what?
Pineapple
Pineapple: Kroc's Hula Burger, a grilled slice with cheese on a bun, was tested against a franchisee's fish sandwich in 1962 and sold six to the fish's 350.
Q 13The Egg McMuffin, created by franchisee Herb Peterson, was designed to resemble which breakfast dish?
Eggs Benedict
Q 21Which McDonald's sandwich did franchisee Al Bernardin introduce in Fremont, California, in 1971?
Quarter Pounder
Quarter Pounder: Bernardin, once the company's head of product development, sold it under the slogan 'Today Fremont, tomorrow the world', and within two years it was on the national menu.
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
Eggs Benedict was Herb Peterson's model: he cooked the egg in a ring to keep it round, then asked Ray Kroc to come and look at something without telling him what it was.
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; McDonald's says the uniform shapes help every nugget cook evenly and make dipping more fun.
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 16What flavour is McDonald's green Shamrock Shake, sold around St Patrick's Day?
Mint
Mint is the flavour today, but the 1970 original was lemon-lime, made with 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 19Which film franchise got the first Happy Meal tie-in, in December 1979?
Star Trek
Star Trek: the Star Trek Meal promoted Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with a comic strip of the film spread across the boxes, so children needed several meals to collect the whole set.
Q 20Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño's 1970s 'Ronald Menu', a forerunner of the Happy Meal, was created in which country?
Guatemala
Guatemala: she saw that adult portions were too big for children, so she bundled a small burger, small fries, an ice cream and a toy, an idea the Happy Meal is often traced to.
Australia: McCafé began in Melbourne in 1993, championed by Charlie Bell, who later ran all of McDonald's, and it did so well there that the company copied it around the world.
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 played Bozo the Clown on Washington's WRC-TV; he wore a paper cup for a nose as Ronald, and was replaced when the clown went national.
Q 25Which McDonaldland character debuted in 1971 as a four-armed villain who stole shakes?
Grimace
Grimace began as 'Evil Grimace', a scaly thief; after a poor early reception McDonald's removed two of his arms and recast him as Ronald's gentle best friend.
Q 26In the 1970s the creators of which children's TV show sued McDonald's, claiming McDonaldland copied it?
H.R. Pufnstuf
H.R. Pufnstuf's creators, Sid and Marty Krofft, sued in 1971 after an ad agency that had sounded them out about a campaign went ahead without them; a jury sided with them in 1973.
Q 27What colour is Ronald McDonald's hair?
Red
Red hair has topped Ronald McDonald's yellow suit since the 1960s; McDonald's has used him far less since a wave of 'creepy clown' sightings in 2016.
Q 28McDonald's management training school awards its graduates a degree in what?
Hamburgerology
Hamburgerology is the 'degree' from the chain's training school, which began in 1961 in the basement of a restaurant in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and now has campuses from Tokyo to São Paulo.
Q 29What did Stella Liebeck first ask McDonald's for after its coffee burned her?
Her medical costs
Her medical costs and lost income, about $20,000, were all Liebeck sought at first; McDonald's offered $800, so the case went to a jury, which held the company mostly to blame.
Q 30What finally happened to the 1994 McDonald's hot coffee jury award?
Cut, then settled
Cut, then settled: the judge reduced the punitive damages by more than 80 per cent, and the two sides then reached a confidential deal rather than spend years on appeals.