Overall political contributions from the 14 restaurant chains Eater examined have gone mostly to Republican causes. Only Chipotle and Starbucks gave more money to Democrats than Republicans from 2010 to 2014. So far in this election cycle, two more companies, Dunkin' Brands and Panera Bread, have joined the list. The data combines political donations from company PACs, individual employees, and CEOs during the 2016 election cycle (January 2015 until now).

Select a donor type above to explore how the numbers break down.

While company PACs and CEOs seem to shy away from supporting presidential candidates, many Trump and Clinton supporters are independently contributing money to the candidates' campaigns. Within the food service industry, the overwhelming majority of worker support has gone to Clinton, who takes more than 95 percent of contributions from the companies on our list. Trump, who self-financed much of his primary campaign, only saw a donation from one Dairy Queen employee, $266.

The data reflects contributions from donors from January 2015 to September 12, 2016, who have listed the companies on our list as employers. The data might not reflect contributions that included poor spelling or wording of the company names.

Political action committees allow company executives, stakeholders, and their families to pool financial resources and distribute them to political candidates or groups. The money is doled out by a special board, which keeps the contributions in a bank account separate from the rest of the company's funds. All the chains on our list with PACs give most of their money to Republicans. Some companies don’t have PACs, which we labeled neutral. The charts represent data as reported by OpenSecrets's organization profile summaries as of September 12, 2016.

While executives can make political contributions via PACs, employees can, of course, make their own individual donations and cite their employers on the donation forms. During the 2016 election cycle, employees donated more to Democrats than Republicans in most companies on the list. Starbucks workers gave more than $76,000 to Democrats, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. McDonald's employees donated more than $88,000 to Republicans, which accounts for more than 60 percent of all money Republicans got from restaurant employees.

The data below does not include CEO contributions. For CEO donations, click the 'CEOs' tab. Read more about how much employees gave to Clinton and challenger Donald Trump by clicking the 'Presidential' tab.

Chief executives get to make the most important decisions for a company, including establishing its values and mission. The people and organizations that CEOs and company presidents support could give insight into how they run their businesses and view their clients. Here are the political leanings of food chains based on CEO political contributions during the 2016 election cycle (the data represents the contributions of the acting CEO at the time). The contributing CEOs on our list have donated either strictly Republican or Democrat. Only one, Elizabeth Smith — CEO of Bloomin' Brands — donated to a presidential nominee, giving more than $5,000 to Hillary for America.