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McDonald’s is one of the many fast food restaurants that prides itself on the consistent dining experience customers are supposed to get at all of its locations. However, some of them fail to meet those expectations, including a couple in a college town in Alabama that has the dubious distinction of being the only place in America with multiple restaurants near the top of the list of the country’s worst-rated.
It’s been more than 85 years since the first McDonald’s restaurant opened for business in San Bernardino, California, which was operated by two brothers who had dreams of founding a restaurant empire.
They technically achieved that goal, although a franchisee named Ray Kroc was primarily responsible for turning the chain into the behemoth it became after dropping $2.7 million to acquire their stake in a company that eventually became the biggest fast food corporation on the planet.
As things currently stand, McDonald’s operates more than 45,000 restaurants in over 100 different countries around the globe. There are close to 14,000 in the United States alone, and anyone who’s gotten the chance to visit a variety of locations in America is likely aware that the experience can be pretty hit or miss.
“Miss” would appear to be the prevailing sentiment at the restaurants that currently boast the worst ratings on Google, and there’s one town in Alabama you seemingly want to avoid if you’re hoping for an enjoyable experience.
Two McDonald’s outposts in Auburn, Alabama landed on the list of the Top 10 worst-rated locations in the United States
Part of the reason McDonald’s is so popular is that it offers a sense of comfort to customers who know what they’re going to get regardless of where they’re grabbing a meal; a Big Mac in a tiny town in Oklahoma is supposed to taste just like one you’d order in Orlando.
The company goes to great lengths to standardize its cooking methods and employee protocols to ensure that’s the case, but there’s only so much you can do to ensure quality when you oversee a massive enterprise where 95% of restaurants are privately owned by a franchisee.
That reality is reflected in the data that was compiled by SEO Backlinks in a quest to determine the highest and lowest-rated McDonald’s in the United States based on their overall star rating on Google.
It would appear Eagle Pass, Texas is the place to go if you want the best of what McDonald’s has to offer. A location on Main Street has the best rating in the country with 4.25 stars, and the one on Del Rio Blvd rounded out the Top 10 best at 4.14.
On the flip side of the coin, the McDonald’s on North 163rd Ave in Surprise, Arizona firmly earned the lowest rating with an average of 1.55 stars, ahead of one on Route 20 in Goshen, Indiana that took the silver with 1.99 (the only two in the nation that come in lower than two).
The Mickey D’s on West Magnolia Ave in Auburn, Alabama (right next to the university of the same name) took the bronze in that category at 2.27, but it wasn’t alone at the bottom of the barrel, as the home of the Tigers also boasted the seventh-worst-rated on the list thanks to the one on Opelika Rd (2.42).
There is a third McDonald’s in Auburn on College Street, and that’s seemingly the one you want to go to if you’re there when you consider it sits at a comparatively stellar 3.1 stars.