FINANCE
CHAIN RESTAURANT SALES SLOWED AGAIN IN 2025
The bulk of the Top 500 chain restaurants’ growth came in just three categories: coffee, beverages, and chicken. For everybody else, it was a market-share game at best. C hain restaurant sales last year slowed to their lowest rate of growth, outside the pandemic, since the Great Recession, according to the 2026 Technomic Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report. lower than the 3.5% growth in 2024, as the industry encountered a host of challenges, from weak consumer confidence to the growing use of weight-loss drugs to bad weather and an immigration crackdown. Even that might overstate the industry’s performance. A lot of the growth last year was driven by high-performing restaurant chains in specific sectors, notably chicken, coffee, beverages and snacks. Total U.S. sales generated by the 500 largest restaurant chains grew just 3% to $451.5 billion. That was lower than the 3.8% menu price inflation last year, and it was
JONATHAN MAZE
JONATHAN.MAZE@INFORMA.COM
Image by Sue Pearsall
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RESTAURANT BUSINESS JULY 2026
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