What seemed impossible at one time is about to happen. McDonald's is no longer going to be the largest restaurant chain in the world by number of units.Subway, with 31,800 units, is about to overtake McDonald's total of 32,158 restaurants. While McDonald's is slowing new-store growth, Subway continues to open 40 stores a month and is making a big international push.Of course, unit counts aren't everything. According to Ad Age, quoting data from Technomic, the average McDonald's has $2.3 million in sales annually, while a Subway only brings in $445,000.We don't see any data on square footage, but we would imagine the average McDonald's is much physically larger as well.So what is Subway's saturation point? Are they too aggressive in their plans? The ones we see in Manhattan are usually packed during lunch, but that's probably not the norm across the country.
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