COVER STORY
THE TECHNOMIC TOP 500: IN A TOUGH YEAR, CONSUMERS PLAYED FAVORITES Chain restaurant sales increased just 3% last year, the worst year since the pandemic and well below menu-price inflation. Big-name chains like McDonald’s, Starbucks and Chick- fil-A underperformed while chicken and Mexican thrived.
CEO KEVIN HOCHMAN HAS LED A REMARKABLE TUR PHOTO BY TERRI GLANGER
C hain restaurant sales grew just 3% in 2024, according to the 2025 Technomic Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report, as a consumer frustrated by high fast-food prices shifted spending from traditional, big-name players to smaller, up-and-coming names or they stayed home altogether. The 500 largest chains in the U.S. generated $437.1 billion in 2024. But the 3.1% increase did not come close to the 4.1% menu-price inflation last year, meaning the group as a whole lost a percentage point of customer traffic. Given the 1.6% unit growth during the year, traffic on a same-store basis was worse. Forty percent of chains on the Top 500 reported sales declines last year. And more than half of chains generated sales growth lower than the rate of menu-price inflation. Some of those disappointing numbers came from the chains at the very top. McDonald’s, Starbucks and Chick-fil-A, which cumulatively account for a quarter of the Top 500 chain sales, each had
JONATHAN MAZE
JONATHAN.MAZE@INFORMA.COM
14
RESTAURANT BUSINESS JULY 2025
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