Continuing his "geography of American food and drink" series—which has already looked at pizza places, coffee shops, and grocery stores vs. bars—Nathan Yau of FlowingData has put together a map showing the regional territories of seven major burger chains.
The color of each dot represents the nearest closest chain within a 10-mile radius. Turns out that McDonald's doesn't have quite the stranglehold you'd think—the chain dominates the Northeast, but trades blows with Dairy Queen in the Midwest and Sonic throughout much of the South. Yau found 23 chains that had at least 100 locations in the contiguous U.S., and you can see those individual maps over at FlowingData.