If you were asked to guess which U.S. restaurant chain generates the most revenue per restaurant, you might have picked a fine-dining chain, a steakhouse, or perhaps the high-volume Cheesecake Factory.
You would not have been particularly close.
The brand with the highest average unit volumes is Din Tai Fung, an upscale-casual soup dumpling chain from Taiwan with 16 U.S. locations.
Din Tai Fung generated AUVs of $27.4 million last year, or nearly double that of the next closest chain, the fine-dining steakhouse Mastro’s.
That’s according to Top 500 restaurant chain data from industry researcher Technomic, which confirmed the $27.4 million figure is not a typo.
Founded in 1958 in Taiwan as a cooking oil business, Din Tai Fung later rebranded as a noodle shop and by 2000 made its way to the U.S. Today, it has 180 locations in 13 countries and remains family-owned.
It’s known for its xiao long bao, or soup dumplings, which are hand-made in its restaurants in view of customers.
And it has attracted a cult-like following on the West Coast, where most of its U.S. restaurants are located. The chain generated $411.6 million in sales last year, an increase of nearly 20% year over year, per Technomic.
To put its eye-popping AUVs into perspective, it’s like combining two Cheesecake Factories into a single restaurant, or almost four Chick-fil-As, or just under seven McDonald’s, or 27 Bruegger’s Bagels, or 54 Yogurtlands.
Put another way, the average Din Tai Fung location would be the 15th-largest stand-alone restaurant in the country, according to our ranking of the Top 100 Independents.
To generate unit volumes of that magnitude, a restaurant generally has to do three things: It has to be big, customers have to spend a decent amount, and it has to be busy.
Din Tai Fung checks all three of those boxes.
The chain’s restaurants are large, anywhere from 5,580 square feet to 25,000 square feet at its sprawling new Manhattan location.
Its check averages are high—about $45 per person, according to Technomic. Though individual dishes are reasonably priced—few are more than $20—many customers order multiple items to share with the table. Soup dumplings come in baskets of 10, and the menu is heavy on apps, wontons, greens and other shareables. It also has a full bar, which can further boost check size.
And finally, its restaurants are notoriously hard to get into without a wait. In other words, they’re busy.
Customers can watch soup dumplings being made. | Photo: Shutterstock
Din Tai Fung is part of a wave of fast-growing Asian sit-down chains like KPOT Korean BBQ, Kyuramen and Kura Sushi, which are attracting customers with their unique flavors as well as experiences, such as Kura’s conveyor-belt sushi system.
In an otherwise slow year for the casual-dining segment, sales at Asian chains rose 7.6%, according to Technomic.
But Din Tai Fung’s AUVs put it in a league of its own. The next largest Asian chain in terms of AUVs is the high-end Nobu, at $10.12 million per unit, followed by Benihana at $6.46 million.
And it is planning to grow its presence in North America. Last year, it named its first CEOs for its North American division, brothers Aaron and Albert Yang, the grandsons of Din Tai Fung founder Bing-Yi Yang.
It recently opened a new location in Vancouver and will soon debut in Arizona, in Scottsdale’s Fashion Square mall.
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