Pizza giant Domino’s opened the most stores in the fast food sector last year, according to the 2022 Annual Fast Food & Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Retail Network Report.

Overall the fast food sector saw 301 new stores open a significant rise from the 188 store openings in 2021.

Domino’s opened 34 stores, building its portfolio to 754 outlets. Most openings were in major cities.

McDonald’s took the second spot with 20 new stores; Sushi Hub opened 18 outlets.

The report, produced by GapMaps, a cloud-based data intelligence platform, revealed Patty Smiths had the highest net growth in percentage terms.

Patty Smiths unveiled 15 new stores, bringing its total footprint to 37 stores, an increase of 41 per cent.

Betty’s Burgers ended the year with 54 stores (13 new) while Taco Bell opened 10 new outlets to reach a 36-store footprint. All three brands focused on the major metropolitan areas.

Scott Johnson, senior analyst at GapMaps, said “The 2022 report reflects increased store development activity as the country continues to emerge from the Covid-19 restrictions that hit brands in 2021.”

Twenty one brands out of 29 showed positive net store growth in 2022.

During the year 122 stores closed, which resulted in a net change of 179 additional stores across all brands tracked.

Subway has the biggest footprint

Subway maintains the largest network with a total of 1229 stores despite closing one more store than it opened.

McDonald’s has the second largest store network (1049 stores) and the highest total network sales. Coffee and breakfast have driven additional store sales. In metro areas, Subway operates about 46 stores for one million residents.

Within these cities, more than 80 per cent of residents live within 2km of a store.

In contrast, McDonald’s operates about 39 stores per million residents across most major cities and KFC 27 stores per million.

Of the cities with more than 100,000 residents, both Townsville and the Gold Coast have more than 450 QSR stores per million residents. This compares to only 240 stores per million residents within Sydney. This pattern is repeated across all the major QSR brands, boosted by the high ratio of tourists to residents.

Strong recovery for QSR sector

In terms of best non-metro coverage, both Subway and McDonald’s operate a store in every city with more than 20,000 residents, as well as in 66 per cent of the 169 cities that have between five and 20,000 residents. Domino’s, KFC and Hungry Jacks are between 10 and 20 cities behind.

Melbourne was the most vibrant city for fast food store openings, unveiling 41 new outlets. Sydney recorded 28 and Perth and Adelaide 27 respectively.

“This store activity in Melbourne may be attributed to limited growth or temporary closures observed across Covid-19,” said Johnson. “But it is also reflective of rapid population growth within Melbourne’s growth areas.

“Undoubtedly, we have seen a resilient QSR sector in 2022 which, despite the pandemic, saw store sales increase by 20-30 per cent in the same period, and in the last three months of 2022, saw 76 new store openings versus 20 store closures in the same period,” said Johnson.

GapMaps produces quarterly reports on fast food store openings and closures.

• This story was originally published in Franchise Executive.