A few years ago I read McDonald’s: Behind the arches (click to order). It was the first book I read about a prominent business, and got me interested in what makes businesses tick. McDonald’s is a fascinating company, and today, I thought I’d share a great infographic from Comparecamp.com filled with a number of interesting facts about McDonald’s. Here’s what Comparecamp.com has to say:

n 1955 a Coke executive got wind of a man who claimed his restaurant would take America by storm. Curious, the executive pulled up to a new restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois and approached a guy with a water hose cleaning the parking lot. He asked for the owner named Ray Kroc, the man who made the claim. The guy with the hose smiled. He was Mr. Kroc. Thus, the story goes how the world’s largest fast food chain met the world’s largest soft drinks company. Today, McDonald’s is Coke’s largest customer, the only one, in fact, with a Coke division.

Mr. Kroc couldn’t be faulted to make such a lame claim–America’s largest restaurant. He wouldn’t know yet that his Golden Arches would take the world by storm. Today McDonald’s revenue is bigger than Vermont’s entire economy and its US ad spending alone nearly matched the combined ad spending of Obama and Romney in the last election.

There are more super-size facts about McDonald’s in the infographic prepared by our team. For instance, the restaurant needs to kill a million cows yearly to feed you with burgers, or to make about 75 hamburgers per second, according to a USA Today article.

Then there are the controversies. If you think you’ve read all the issues surrounding the Happy Meal, check the stories we’ve unearthed. Blamed for the rising obesity incidence among American children, McDonald’s did blame and fire the first Ronald McDonald actor for, guess what?

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