ARA QSR · Q2 2026 · Full Shelf Diagnostic
Every moment on this shelf is claimed — and a regional burger chain outranks ten national ones.
Why these three lead the shelf
1. Chick-fil-Achosen 45× / 16.3% / 4/4 models
Wins the quality, service and hospitality questions outright. One product and one service claim, both repeated without variation.
2. McDonald'schosen 40× / 14.5% / 4/4 models
Named on the same number of questions as Chick-fil-A but leading fewer, because being everywhere answers the general question and none of the specific ones.
3. Taco Bellchosen 26× / 9.4% / 4/4 models
Third on the shelf on the strength of a single trait “the craveable menu item” that it has spent fifteen years defining its whole personality.
About the AI Shelf
The AI Shelf is the short list of names an AI assistant gives when someone asks what to buy. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity answer the questions a real buyer asks, and every brand they name lands on the shelf. Your customer sees it before they see yours, and nobody can pay for position on it.
Each time a model chooses a brand over every other brand it could have named, that counts once. 276 choices were made here. Slice size is share of all of them.
16.3%largest holding — Chick-fil-A
70.7%held by the 15 audited chains
42brands named in total
The takeaway
There is no empty ground in fast food. Every recommendation moment is claimed, so presence has to be taken from a brand the models already trust: the most expensive kind of category to enter.
In the current ARA IndexNot currently in the ARA Index — shaded by rank, darkest = chosen least often
All 42 brands — the annotated ranking
| # | Name | Chosen | Share | Models | Best | Δ |
| 1 | Chick-fil-A | 45 | 16.3% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 2 | McDonald's | 40 | 14.5% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 3 | Taco Bell | 26 | 9.4% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 4 | Chipotle | 21 | 7.6% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 5 | Wendy's | 17 | 6.2% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 6 | In-N-Out Burger | 16 | 5.8% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 7 | Starbucks | 14 | 5.1% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 8 | Burger King | 13 | 4.7% | 4/4 | #2 | — |
| 9 | Subway | 12 | 4.3% | 4/4 | #2 | — |
| 10 | Panera Bread | 11 | 4.0% | 4/4 | #1 | — |
| 11 | KFC | 6 | 2.2% | 3/4 | #2 | — |
| 12 | Popeyes | 6 | 2.2% | 3/4 | #4 | — |
| 13 | Arby's | 4 | 1.4% | 2/4 | #2 | — |
| 14 | Culver's | 4 | 1.4% | 3/4 | #1 | — |
| 15 | Dunkin' | 4 | 1.4% | 3/4 | #3 | — |
| 16 | Domino's | 3 | 1.1% | 2/4 | #4 | — |
| 17 | Five Guys | 3 | 1.1% | 3/4 | #2 | — |
| 18 | Shake Shack | 3 | 1.1% | 3/4 | #3 | — |
| 19 | White Castle | 3 | 1.1% | 3/4 | #4 | — |
| 20 | Jack in the Box | 2 | 0.7% | 2/4 | #3 | — |
| 21 | Little Caesars | 2 | 0.7% | 2/4 | #5 | — |
| 22 | Pizza Hut | 2 | 0.7% | 2/4 | #6 | — |
| 23 | Amy's Drive Thru | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #6 | — |
| 24 | Baskin-Robbins | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #4 | — |
| 25 | Bojangles | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #6 | — |
| 26 | Breadless | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #4 | — |
| 27 | Burgerville | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #5 | — |
| 28 | Cava | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #2 | — |
| 29 | Cinnabon | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #6 | — |
| 30 | Crumbl Cookies | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #7 | — |
| 31 | Dairy Queen | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #2 | — |
| 32 | Jersey Mike's | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #1 | — |
| 33 | Krispy Kreme | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #5 | — |
| 34 | Panda Express | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #6 | — |
| 35 | Plant Power Fast Food | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #7 | — |
| 36 | Qdoba | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #2 | — |
| 37 | Raising Cane's | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #3 | — |
| 38 | Sweetgreen | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #5 | — |
| 39 | Tim Hortons | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #3 | — |
| 40 | Trader Joe's | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #4 | — |
| 41 | Veggie Grill | 1 | 0.4% | 1/4 | #5 | — |
| 42 | Sonic | 0 | 0.0% | 0/4 | — | — |
ARA · ALGORITHM READINESS ANALYSIS · ARACO.AI — 4 models × 16 customer questions, top answers per cell. MEASURING AI TRUST IN BRANDS.
Naming variants merged before counting: In-N-Out Burger · Popeyes · Starbucks · Sweetgreen. Query counts for merged brands are upper bounds.
Naming variants merged before counting: In-N-Out Burger · Popeyes · Starbucks · Sweetgreen. Query counts for merged brands are upper bounds.