The Big Mac can take a nap.
As customers become increasingly wary of “shrinkflation” and price hikes at big burger chains, smaller fast-food purveyors are cashing in.
Industry data shows that regional chains and cult favorites like In-N-Out Burger, Whataburger, and Culver’s are driving growth in the hamburger category, putting their larger competitors to shame.
Put that on your bun and bite it.
In 2025, California-based In-N-Out’s domestic sales grew by around 10%.
Meanwhile, according to Technomic’s market research, Wisconsin-based Culver’s and Texas-born Whataburger now rank as the fifth- and sixth-largest U.S. burger chains by sales.
Though larger chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King outrank these smaller brands in terms of marketing budgets and sheer number of locations, regional competitors are coming for their ketchup thanks to uncompromising quality, fierce brand loyalty, and customer customization.
Whatagburger, which operates in 17 states and generates more than $4 billion in annual sales, is growing at six times its pre-COVID rate with plans to open 60 additional locations this year.
“There is a craveability that I think has created this loyalty over so many decades,” Whataburger CEO Debbie Stroud told WSJ earlier this month.
“Our customers understand that they can add grilled jalapeños or swap out grilled onions for our freshly cut tomatoes,” she added.
Julie Fussner, chief executive of Culver’s, which operates 1,066 locations across 26 states, calls out customer service as the key differentiator between her beloved regional chain and behemoth national brands.
“It’s the breadth of the menu and the quality of our food,” she told WSJ.
While regional chains are booming, Technomic found that fast-food burger chains en masse are experiencing the slowest growth among the top ten restaurant categories, except for pizza and sandwiches.
Fast-food chains have been grappling with prolonged sales weakness in major markets like the US, as rising living costs and softer job conditions curb consumers’ willingness to eat out.
Though trying economic times typically correlate with an uptick in fast-food purchases, cost-conscious customers are not buying.
And while growth is slow going, prices have been adding up.
According to the Consumer Price Index Report, which tracks fast-food prices, prices have risen by around 38% from the 2020 pandemic through 2025, outpacing inflation over the same period by around 56%.
In 2024, a report found that McDonald’s had hiked its menu prices by more than 100% over the last decade — more than three times the rate of US inflation.
Some of the most egregiously inflated items included $18 for a Big Mac meal in Connecticut, $7.29 for an Egg McMuffin, and $5.69 for a side of hash browns.
Meanwhile, higher prices have not correlated with higher marks.
The share of US customers who said McDonald’s offers good value fell from 55% to roughly 40% between 2020 and 2024, and has largely stayed there since, according to surveys from UBS Evidence Labs shared with Reuters last month.
In response, McDonald’s has launched upgraded burgers and vowed to improve its food quality, create more inviting restaurant spaces, and resurrect play spaces.
Top-tier competitors are following suit. This year, Burger King made its first major changes to the classic Whopper in nearly a decade, upgrading the bun, mayonnaise and packaging after customer feedback.
While larger chains continue to try to rebound by offering upgrades and introducing discounted menu items, brands like Whataburger have kept sales steady with an unwavering commitment to quality and the customer experience.
According to survey data, while Culver’s and Whataburger do not rank high among customers for price point or speed, they get consistently high marks for food quality and overall satisfaction.
Essentially, in a market where fast food is increasingly expensive, customers are willing to pay more for a product that feels high-value.
Part of maintaining that high value is a dedication to consistency over growth.
Indeed, a majority of regional chains are privately owned with founding families still involved in operations.
In-N-Out, California’s favorite burger chain, was founded in 1948 by Harry and Ester Snyder in Baldwin Park as California’s first drive-thru hamburger stand. The company remains owned and operated by the Snyders’ granddaughter, Lynsi, and does not franchise its restaurants.
Though the company now operates restaurants across California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and Tennessee, it has only added four states to its coverage area in the last ten years.
Moreover, the brand chose to slow its growth in 2010 to maintain food quality and service.
“An overemphasis on growth would compromise our performance,” explained In-N-Out Chief Operating Officer Denny Warnick.
To that end, or, pickle spear, In-N-Out burgers are still made with fresh, never-frozen beef patties produced by In-N-Out’s own butchers, while fries are hand-diced from whole potatoes inside each restaurant.

A former hospital executive siphoned at least $14 million from a health system and used company money to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included a $109,000 Beverly Hills baptism celebration for his son, according to a bombshell lawsuit.
Michael Sarian, the ousted founder and former CEO of Healthcare Systems of America, was accused of diverting millions of dollars from hospitals in Florida and other states into personal accounts, family trusts and other unauthorized uses while the facilities struggled to pay bills and maintain operations.
The lawsuit, which was first reported by the Miami Herald, alleges Sarian treated company accounts as his personal piggy bank, funneling millions out of the health system between September 2024 and January 2026.
Among the most eye-popping allegations is a claim that more than $109,000 was wired from a Healthcare Systems of America corporate account to the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills for Sarian’s son’s baptism celebration.
The filing includes a social-media post allegedly showing the event, as well as banking records identifying a baptism as the purpose of the transfer.
The suit also alleges Sarian forged — or directed someone else to forge — an employee’s signature to divert another $120,000.
Sarian has denied wrongdoing.
He and his wife, Evelina, have argued that the baptism payment was an authorized repayment of money he previously advanced to help cover hospital payroll and have characterized the allegations as part of an effort to seize control of the company.
The legal fight is the latest twist in a bitter legal battle for control of a hospital network that operates Palmetto General Hospital, Coral Gables Hospital, Hialeah Hospital, North Shore Medical Center and Florida Medical Center.
According to the complaint, Sarian’s transfers contributed to severe financial strain across the system, impairing its ability to meet payroll, pay vendors, compensate physicians and satisfy other operating obligations.
The lawsuit cited by the Herald alleges that within a day of Healthcare Systems of America receiving more than $16 million intended to support hospital operations and acquisitions, $1.28 million was transferred into Sarian’s personal accounts.
Plaintiffs claim Sarian has failed to provide a full accounting of the transfers.
Sarian disputes the allegations and has accused Faisal Gill — a former family attorney who now controls the Florida hospital system — of orchestrating a corporate takeover.
Gill has denied those accusations, saying the litigation is intended to recover money that rightfully belongs to the hospitals and ensure resources are directed toward patient care.
The dispute follows an earlier court fight in which new management accused Sarian of attempting to regain control of hospital bank accounts after he was removed as chief executive.
The hospitals at the center of the battle were acquired in 2024 out of the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care, the once-sprawling hospital chain whose collapse triggered one of the largest healthcare restructurings in recent years.
The Post has sought comment from Sarian and Gill.

Over the last year, Lauren Sánchez Bezos has become a key player in determining which organizations and causes get donations from Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion climate change fund.
According to Fortune, Sánchez Bezos has served as the vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund since its early days in 2020, when she was the girlfriend of the Amazon multi-billionaire.
The fund, the largest contribution any individual has ever made to the environment, according to Northeastern University, is obligated to deploy all $10 billion by the end of the decade. So far, it has cut checks toward 335 grants, totaling $2.4 billion, according to the fund’s website.
Since Sánchez Bezos married her now-husband last year in a star-studded affair in Venice, she has become a more public-facing leader of the fund, often announcing new donations.
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In September 2025, she touted that the fund had disbursed $37.5 million in grants to protect 835,000 square miles of water surrounding a dozen nations in the Pacific Ocean. The initial amount was part of the fund’s $100 million commitment to what she called “one of the boldest ocean conservation efforts ever attempted.”
“The Pacific isn’t just a beautiful backdrop, it’s a lifeline,” Sánchez Bezos said in a statement at the time. “Pacific Island nations and territories are setting the pace. We’re here to match that ambition and help turn it into protection at scale.”
In October, she announced $30 million in awards to 15 teams who won the fund’s “AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge.” Each team received $2 million to jump-start their use of artificial intelligence to solve problems such as biodiversity loss and food insecurity.
“AI can be a powerful ally to help make the world a better place,” said Sánchez Bezos. “These innovators, using AI, are showing us new possibilities by reimagining how we grow food, protect wildlife, and power our planet to make a true impact.”
Other than environmental causes, Sánchez Bezos said in December that she and her husband committed $102.5 million to organizations fighting homelessness across the United States. That money comes from the Bezos Day One Families Fund, which has so far donated more than $850 million to outfits in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam.
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The Day One Families Fund is a portion of the total $2 billion Bezos and his wife plan to donate to nonprofits that help homeless families obtain stable housing. There is also an initiative to build and operate tuition-free pre-schools in areas of the country that lack education options.
The couple also gave a $5 million grant, along with the Bezos Courage & Civility Award, to David Flink, the founder of the Neurodiversity Alliance.
The New York-based non-profit provides mentors to students with learning disabilities. Sánchez Bezos has said she unknowingly grew up with dyslexia and struggled in school for years, later being diagnosed with the condition when she was in college.
Despite the Bezoses’ charity, they have not donated nearly as much of their net worth as others who have similar levels of wealth. Most notably, the couple lags significantly behind MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Bezos.
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According to Forbes, Scott has donated $26.4 billion over a period of seven years, representing a staggering 46% of her estimated $35.4 billion net worth. In 2025 alone, she was the most charitable person on Earth with $7.2 billion in donations.
Over his entire life, Bezos has given away $4.6 billion, which is less than 2% of his $266 billion net worth, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bezos has also not signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates that urges billionaires to give the majority of their wealth away in their lifetimes.
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Scott has signed the pledge, but Bezos has not. He told CNN in 2022 that he intends to donate most of his money but said it was difficult to do that efficiently.
“It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar,” he said in the CNN interview.

A basic burger ingredient now comes with a side of economic reality: a pound of standard ground beef increasingly costs more than an hour of work at the federal minimum wage. The average price of a pound of lean ground beef has hit $8.34, outpacing the nationwide wage floor of $7.25 that hasn’t moved since 2009, when ground beef was around $2.20 a pound, Money reports. The magazine’s review of seven major grocery chains found prices for 80/20 ground beef ranging from about $6.50 at Trader Joe’s and Aldi to nearly $9 per pound at Publix. Even the cheapest variety of ground beef now costs an average of more than $5.40 a pound, according to federal data released Friday.
Earlier this year, the USDA said the US beef cow herd is at its smallest since 1951 after drought forced producers to reduce numbers by selling cows earlier than planned. “Fewer cattle mean less beef, and when supply tightens while demand holds firm, prices rise,” University of Wisconsin-River Falls agricultural economics professor Brenda Boetel tells the Detroit News. She doesn’t see prices coming down any time soon. “If a producer keeps a heifer today, it can be two to three years before her calf enters the beef supply,” Boetel says. “There’s no way to fix a shortage like this quickly.”
The New World screwworm outbreak, which Democratic lawmakers blame on the Trump administration’s cuts to USDA, is threatening to push prices even higher, Politico reports. Money notes that ground beef overtaking the minimum wage is a “largely symbolic development,” since only a small share of workers actually earn that amount and most states have higher minimum wages, but it underscores how far that pay level stretches in an era when grocery costs are up more than 30% since 2020 and likely to keep rising.
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Frank Stronach, who created a global auto parts company from inside a rented garage to become one of Canada’s richest men, was found guilty on Friday of sexual assault and indecent assault in two cases that date back decades.
Mr. Stronach was also acquitted on three other charges of sexual assault involving two other women. The verdict rendered by Justice Anne Molloy of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto represents a remarkable downfall for Mr. Stronach, a recipient of Canada’s highest civilian honor.
The founder of Magna International, Mr. Stronach pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges stemming from seven complainants. The allegations spanned from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Beginning in the 1980s, Magna became a global operation that moved beyond just making parts into assembling vehicles for several automakers including Mercedes-Benz. During Mr. Stronach’s tenure the company tried to take over both Chrysler and Opel, the former European arm of General Motors.
But Mr. Stronach also has a long history of making inappropriate public remarks about women. In the midst of his unsuccessful bid for Chrysler, he opened the company’s 2007 annual meeting by asking shareholders gathered in a Toronto concert hall, who was more attractive to women, himself or his longtime aide, Manfred Gingl.
The charges against Mr. Stronach heard by Justice Molloy mainly involve women who he met through Magna or other companies that he controlled.
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