Most Iconic Menu Items at Your Favorite Fast Food Chains

As of 2023, there were more than 200,000 fast food outlets of various kinds around the United States, and American consumers are said to spend about $200 billion on food and drinks from these establishments every year. According to some estimates, as much as 80% of us eat fast food at least once a month and 20% eat it twice a week or more.

fast food restaurants are so successful for several obvious reasons: First of all, they’re, well, fast; we place our order and five minutes later, or maybe less, the food is in our hands. Secondly, they’re cheap, at least compared to sit-down eateries. But there’s another factor at play here, too: Successful fast food operations tend to develop and serve signature items, engineered to appeal to our senses through a balance of fat, salt, sometimes sugar, and always flavor — wherever it may be derived from.

Most of us surely realize that the frequent consumption of fast food fare isn’t good for us, but no matter how much we might disdain such fare, the fact is that a lot of us find it pretty irresistible at least some of the time.

If and when we do choose to patronize a McDonald’s or a Subway or a Taco Bell, what do we order? That’s a matter of taste, of course, but every chain has at least one iconic menu item and probably more — foods that pretty much define them, and that account for a major portion of their sales. (Here’s a list of salt bombs — fast food items with the most sodium.)

24/7 Tempo has consulted corporate websites, fast food-focused blogs, and other sources to come up with a list of iconic food items at 21 of the nation’s most popular chains. These items are either the things ordered most frequently or the offerings that helped make the chain’s reputation — or both.

Scroll below to read about the most iconic menu items at your favorite fast food chains.

Arby’s

• Menu item: Classic Roast Beef

Arby’s has experimented with venison sandwiches, competes in the chicken sandwich arena, and currently offers several variations on a fish sandwich. But the chain made its reputation with roast beef, and its Classic Roast Beef sandwich, with a pile of thin-sliced meat on a toasted sesame bun dressed with ketchupy Arby’s Sauce or the horseradish-flavored Horsey Sauce, is hard to beat.

Auntie Anne’s

• Menu item: Original Pretzel

Sure, the Nuggets are good (plain, cinnamon-sugar, or pepperoni) and the Pretzel Dog (pretzel dough wrapped around a Nathan’s hot dog) is pretty irresistible, but the basic Auntie Anne’s pretzel, gracefully twisted in the traditional form, soft and extravagantly salty — and dipped into cheese sauce of one of the other available condiments — is what defines this chain.

Burger King

• Menu item: The Whopper

As emblematic of Burger King as the Big Mac is of McDonald’s (see below), the Whopper (introduced, incidentally, in 1957, 11 years before the Big Mac) is a flame-grilled quarter-pound patty topped with…well, the possiblities are legion. In fact, the chain claims that there are more than 200,000 possible customized combinations — and is currently running a contest asking Whopper-lovers to submit their dream version of the burger, featuring as many as eight toppings, for a chance to win $1 million.

Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s

• Menu item: Famous Star

Both iterations of this two-part chain (on the West Coast, it’s Carl’s Jr. ; on the East Coast, it’s Hardee’s) use a five-pointed star with a smiley face as their logo, so it’s not surprising that the favored menu item at both is the burger called the Famous Star. Introduced by founder Carl Karcher in 1968, it’s a charbroiled patty with American cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and the chain’s Thousand Island dressing-like special sauce.

Chick-fil-A

• Menu item: Chicken Sandwich

The nation’s leading fast food chicken chain built its success on its much-imitated basic chicken sandwich — a piece of breaded boneless chicken breast, pressure-cooked in peanut oil, served on a buttered and toasted bun with dill pickle chips. Lettuce, tomato, and a choice of cheeses may be added.

Dairy Queen

• Menu item: Blizzard Treats

This chain sells burgers, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, and even pretzel sticks with queso, but pay attention to the “Dairy” part of its name. That means milkshakes, but above all the famous Blizzard Treats (or just “Blizzards”), part of the DQ mystique since 1985. These are turn-them-upside-down-and-they-won’t-pour-out concoctions of soft-serve ice cream with various additions. Among the current flavors are Red Velvet Cake, Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough, and Caramel Fudge Cheesecake.

Domino’s

• Menu item: Pepperoni Pizza

The biggest pizza chain in the U.S., Domino’s offers design-your-own pies in four sizes, with a wide choice of crusts, sauces, and toppings, as well as a dozen ready-made but customizable combinations (plus chicken dishes, pastas, sandwiches, and more). According to various food delivery services, though, despite the range of choices, the most popular order at Domino’s is plain old pepperoni pizza.

Dunkin’

• Menu item: Iced Coffee

Dunkin’ (formerly Dunkin’ Donuts) still sells doughnuts, as well as bagels, sandwiches, wraps, “Omelet Bites,” and more, but the most popular item on its menu is iced coffee. The chain has made coffee in general a specialty, sourcing Arabica beans roasted daily and offering a gamut of caffeinated choices, including espresso, flavored blends, and several variations on its frozen Coolatta, but good old-fashioned iced coffee goes out the door faster than anything else on the menu.

In-N-Out Burger

• Menu item: Double-Double Burger

The only locations of this cult-favorite California-born chain, so far at least, are in the West (and especially in its home state) and the Southwest, but its reputation is nationwide. Its signature offering is the Double-Double Burger, involving two beef patties, two slices of American cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato, and a “spread” made of mayo, ketchup, and sweet pickle relish. Those in the know often order the Double-Double “animal style” — a refinement (?) that adds caramelized onions and pickle chips, with the patties fried with mustard.

Jack in the Box

• Menu item: Tacos

Jack in the Box might be best-known for its burgers, but it’s the tacos, sold two to an order, that define the place for many. As of 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that some 554 million two-taco orders were placed every year, and there’s no reason to think that that number had fallen. The tacos are made with white corn tortillas, filled with seasoned ground beef and sliced American cheese, with a mild taco sauce added.

KFC

• Menu item: Original Recipe Chicken

This 72-year-old chain has expanded its menu over the years to include pot pies, tenders, nuggets, even something called Smash’d Potato Bowls — and of course chicken sandwiches. But why would you want anything other than the thing that made The Colonel famous — Original Recipe Chicken, coated in a batter seasoned with that famous “secret blend of 11 herbs & spices” and deep-fried to perfection?

McDonald’s

• Menu item: Bic Mac/World Famous Fries (tie)

It may not be the oldest or quite the largest, but McDonald’s is arguably the world’s most iconic fast food chain, and it sells more than one item that could be called iconic. There’s the Egg McMuffin, which launched the breakfast sandwich craze; the on-again/off-again McRib; maybe even the Filet-O-Fish. But ultimately, two things define Mickey D’s: The Big Mac, composed of two patties, cheese, lettuce, chopped onions, and pickles on a three-slice sesame bun with “special sauce;” and what the chain bills as its World Famous Fries, made from potatoes treated with dextrose and sodium acid pyrophosphate for color, various preservatives, and something called ”natural beef flavor.” Whatever they do to them seems to work, as almost everybody seems to love them — even people who’d probably never eat a Big Mac.

Panda Express

• Menu item: Orange Chicken

Andy Kho, Panda Express executive chef, invented this dish — which became the signature offering of this Chinese-American chain — in 1987, while overseeing the opening of the first Panda Express location in Hawaii. His idea was to combine Southern-style fried chicken with a sweet-and-spicy orange sauce from the Chinese city of Yangzhou (also famous for its fried rice). At first, he applied the sauce to bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, but subsequently catered to American preferences by using boneless, skinless chicken nuggets instead, and by omitting the dried red chiles that would have spiced up the dish originally.

Pizza Hut

• Menu item: Pepperoni Pizza

Pizza Hut used to be the nation’s largest pizza chain until it lost the position to Domino’s (see above), but it remains a strong No. 2. Like its rival, the Pizza Hut lets patrons customize their pies, in this case with a choice of three sizes, four crust types, and 16 toppings. There are also standard offerings, and, again like Domino’s, the winner by far — the one that everybody seems to want — is the pepperoni pizza.

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

• Menu item: Classic Chicken Sandwich

While Popeye’s, like its rival KFC, built its reputation on fried chicken, in conventional form and also as tenders and nuggest, what really brought it to the fore in the fast food world was its introduction in the summer of 2019 to a chicken sandwich — a thick slab of white meat in a thick coating of buttermilk batter, served on a brioche bun with pickles and mayo. The sandwich launched the so-called chicken sandwich wars with Chick-fil-A and other competitors and spawned countless imitations, and the sandwich remains the chain’s signature item to this day.

Shake Shack

• Menu item: ShackBurger

From its modest beginnings as a temporary hot dog cart in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park in 2001, Shake Shack has grown into an international enterprise with more than 400 locations around the world. It still serves dogs, and has made a specialty of its super-thick shakes, but its most iconic item is its ShackBurger, a classic consisting of a hormone- and antibiotic-free beef patty on a Martin’s potato roll with lettuce, tomato, and mustardy Shack Sauce.

Starbucks

• Menu item: Pumpkin Spice Latte

Starbucks has managed to figure out just about everything you can do around a base of coffee (and to some extent tea), creating specialties — most of all its famed Frappuccinos — that often seem more like dessert than mere beverages. Its most iconic, and certainly most widely imitated, concoction, however is the seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte, or PSL, first poured by the chain in 2004. Starbucks is said to sell as many as 350 million cups of the cinnamon-flavored stuff annually.

Subway

• Menu item: Footlong Turkey Sub

America’s largest fast food operation in terms of number of locations, Subway offers an extensive selection of sandwich possibilities, infinitely customizable, as well as breakfast options, wraps, bowls, and even “footlong” churros, pretzels, and cookies. The No. 1 favorite at the chain, however, is said to be the comparatively straightforward, comparatively healthful, footlong turkey sub — a 12-inch sandwich made with turkey breast, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and cucumbers.

Taco Bell

• Menu item: Crunchy Taco

This ubiquitous Mexican-inspired chain is famous for its never-in-Mexico creations like the Crunchwrap Supreme, the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, and the newly added Cheesy Chicken Crispanada, but the basic essential on the Taco Bell menu is the crunchy taco, filled with seasoned ground beef, shredded lettuce, and shredded cheddar cheese — a staple of the chain’s menu since its founder, Glen Bell, adapted the idea from a Mexican restaurant in San Bernardino, CA, in the early 1950s.

Wendy’s

• Menu item: The Baconator

The quintessential Wendy’s specialty, first introduced back in 2007, is The Baconater — a half-pound patty with American cheese and six strips of applewood-smoked bacon. The chain has periodically featured variations, including one with jalapeños, pepper jack cheese, and chipotle ranch sauce, and another that ramped up the Baconator with three patties and nine strips of bacon. The current Baconator elaboration has the same ingredients as the classic one, but is served on a pretzel bun.

White Castle

• Menu item: The Original Slider

White Castle, which claims (with credible evidence) to have been the first-ever fast food hamburger chain, has been known since its 1921 founding in Wichita, KS, for the small, square, steam-grilled burgers known as sliders. Time magazine once dubbed the slider “the most influential burger of all time,” and the chain says that more than 29 billion have been sold over the years (some portion of these in the form of frozen supermarket sliders). The term “slider” has been adopted by restaurants both simple and fancy to mean any kind of small sandwich. (Speaking of such things, here’s a look at the one must-try sandwich in every state.)