Louisville Hits Top 50 Best U.S. Cities for Fast Food Lovers

Looking for a fast-food burger? Louisville has that. Wikimedia Commons/Tim Reckmann

In America, where it feels like there’s a McDonald’s on every corner, Louisville ranked No. 43 on Lawn Starter’s 2023 list of the Top 200 Cities for Fast Food Lovers. In fact, Louisville scored particularly highly in terms of fast food accessibility.

Whether it’s good news is up to interpretation, but among several sub-lists in the report is one titled “Most Fasties Award Winning Fast Food Locations Per Square Mile.” Louisville ranked second only to Miami in that category.

For the main list, the Top 5 Cities for Fast Food Lovers were Orlando, New York, Miami, San Francisco and Chicago. Lawn Starter conducted the study in observance of National Fast Food Day, which is Nov. 16.

The list was compiled using rankings in three categories: Access, Quality and Affordability. Various determining factors in each category were weighted and the results tallied to compile the list. While Louisville fared poorly in Quality (117th) and Affordability (112th), it ranked 5th overall in the Access category which catapulted it into the Top 50.

Specifically, this means that Louisville is strong not just for the number of fast-food joints per square mile, but also the availability of food delivery service. And the number of “Most Fasties” (The Fasties is an over-the-top Thrillist ranking of fast food restaurants and menu items) and number of highly-ranked restaurants being high, that gave Louisville a boost in the category as well.

Elsewhere, Lexington made No. 56 on the list, with a strong showing in the Quality category (31st). Nashville was 82nd on the list, Indianapolis takes the 125th slot, and Cincinnati the 33rd.