Where Does McDonald's Beef Come From, Anyway?

Fast food behemoth McDonald's sells an estimated 75 burgers every second at its many locations all over the world. That is a monumental amount of beef, and matching that impressive statistic day in and day out requires a reliable production source. There may only be one burger from McDonald's that can be ordered freshly cooked, but McDonald's itself notes that its beef actually comes from two major suppliers in particular.

One of the two, Lopez Foods, has enjoyed a longstanding partnership with McDonald's, providing the restaurant with USDA-inspected beef since 1968 (though it was first known as Anderson Meats and Provisions). Along with beef patties, the meat producer also delivers breaded poultry, ground beef and pork, sliced deli meats, and more to other businesses around the globe, including Starbucks. Lopez Foods maintains rigorous safety specifications for all the meat it produces, including third-party annual audits; should anything out of the ordinary occur, the company can track a product's origin and where it went within two hours using an internal stock recovery system.

Lopez Foods CEO Ed Sanchez understands the credit for maintaining those standards isn't reserved for the corporate office folks. In a statement on McDonald's website, he said, "I think what makes Lopez Foods special is the family atmosphere that we all have in the company. And from management all the way down to the production workers, we come together to achieve that goal on McDonald's quality."

The other major supplier of beef for McDonald's, Keystone Foods, has also been a supplier for the fast food chain since the 1960s, when founder Herb Lotman developed a freezing process that was better at maintaining the right texture in burger patties — McDonald's was naturally interested. Along with other distributors, Keystone now provides chicken and fish to McDonald's — indeed, Keystone partnered with the restaurant to develop Chicken McNuggets back in the 1970s, as well as broader distribution innovations. Today, it supplies over 150 million pounds of beef to the chain every year (along with 300 million pounds of chicken and 15 million pounds of fish).

Keystone, which was acquired by Tyson Foods in 2018 for $2.16 billion, doesn't just supply products to McDonald's, either. It has supplier relationships with fast food chains across the globe, in addition to convenience stores and other sales locations, though McDonald's certainly remains one of the biggest names associated with the company.