Trends · data through September 2026

Burger Chains in North Carolina

Iceflower tracks 1,876 stores from 178 burger chains in North Carolina. Culver's grew fastest over the last year, ahead of Smashburger and Steak 'n Shake.

Rankings come from real card and bank transactions across a panel of 130M+ US and EU consumers. We publish relative growth and rankings, never revenue figures. About the data

Tracked chains: 178
Tracked stores: 1,876
Consumer panel: 130M+

Growth ranking

Fastest-growing tracked burger chains

Ranked by year-over-year growth of share of tracked local spend. Arrows show movement in the rankings since last year. Each dot in the chart is one tracked chain: bigger market position to the right, faster growth higher up, more tracked stores in a bigger dot. Colors match the store map below. Culver's and Smashburger sit in the high-growth half.

# Chain YoY growth

Rank	Chain	Rank movement	YoY growth
1	C Culver's	-	+14.6%
2	S Smashburger	▲2	+14.1%
3	S Steak 'n Shake	-	+9.9%
4	W Wayback Burgers	-	+8.2%
5	B Burger King	-	+7.0%
6	H Hwy 55 Burgers Shakes & Fries	▲1	+4.5%
7	F Five Guys	-	+3.0%
8	C Char-Grill	-	+3.0%
9	D Dairi-O	-	+2.6%
10	C Cook Out	▲1	+0.6%
11	M McDonald's	-	+0.3%
12	P P.T.'s Olde Fashioned Grille	-	-2.3%
13	J Jaggers Restaurant	-	-5.2%
14	F Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers	▼1	-6.2%
15	H Hardee's	-	-7.9%

McDonald's
Cook Out
Wendy's
Burger King
Hardee's
Sonic Drive-In
Culver's
Other tracked chains

Store footprint

Store map

1,876 tracked store locations in North Carolina. The 7 largest tracked chains are highlighted.

McDonald's (507)
Cook Out (89)
Wendy's (273)
Burger King (273)
Hardee's (215)
Sonic Drive-In (85)
Culver's (18)
Other tracked chains

Top tracked chains by store count

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