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Since its first franchise opening in Des Plains, Illinois, in 1955, McDonalds has expanded to well over 30,000 locations worldwide. This animation chronicles the spread of McDonalds across the globe.The data used for this animation were taken from mcdonalds.com and mcspotlight.org, and were current up to the year 2000.

"f you traverse the South American nation of Bolivia, from the heights of the Andes Mountains to the Amazon Jungle to the urban streets of Santa Cruz, you'll never once find a Big Mac or a McNugget. They don't exist there-and haven't for about a decade. McDonald's couldn't survive in the mountainous country, so in 2002 the global fast-food chain closed its last store."

"McDonald's may seem to be everywhere, but there are still 105 countries without the fast food giant, from Ghana to Jamaica to Yemen to Tajikistan. And in six countries, McDonald's once had a presence, but due to economics, and sometimes politics, the franchises closed. Still, Jack Russo, a consumer goods policy analyst with the financial services firm Edward Jones, tells The Salt that McDonald's is well-represented overseas. "Two-thirds of their total revenue is outside of the U.S.," Russo says. The company has 34,480 restaurants in 119 countries, including Cuba and France, where it's especially beloved, even by foreigners."

As we discovered last week in Italy, the company likes to to localise its menu. Can global chains 'do' regional specialities?