Fast-food Restaurants

A fast food restaurant, also known as a quick service restaurant or QSR, is a specific type of restaurant characterized both by its fast food cuisine and by minimal table service. Food served in fast food restaurants is cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot to order; food is usually available ready to take away, though seating is provided.

Fast food restaurants are usually part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation, which ships standardized foodstuffs to each restaurant from central locations.

The first fast food restaurants originated in the United States of America during the 1950s. Today, American-founded fast food chains such as McDonald's and KFC are multinational corporations with outlets across the globe.

Variations on the fast food restaurant concept include fast casual restaurants and catering trucks. Fast casual restaurants have higher sit-in ratios, and customers can sit and have their orders brought to them. Catering trucks often park just outside worksites and are popular with factory workers.
Most fast-food restaurants offer take-out: read-to-eat hot food in disposable packaging for the customer to eat off-site.