Chain 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.
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 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.
Median sales growth last year among the Top 500 chains was just 2.5% so, when adjusted for menu-price inflation, the typical chain last year saw a 1.3% decline in sales on a real-dollar basis.
“It was a very, very weak year for the Top 500 overall from a sales perspective,” said Joe Pawlak, managing principal with Technomic, a sibling company of Restaurant Business and Nation’s Restaurant News.
But unit growth remained strong last year, though fewer companies actually added new restaurants last year.
Total unit count grew by 1.4%, again driven by high-growth chains like the beverage brands 7 Brew, Dutch Bros and Swig along with chains such as Dave’s Hot Chicken, Smalls Sliders and Super Chix. Yet that was slower than the unit count growth in 2024, when chains grew units by 1.6%. And nearly half, 48%, of the 500 largest chains either didn’t add new restaurants last year or closed some.
And there was some surprising weakness at the top, as 19 of the 50 largest chains, including seven of the largest 20, finished the year with fewer locations than which they started. That includes mega chain Starbucks along with Burger King and Subway.
Nevertheless, last year’s weak performance has again raised questions about whether the chain restaurant industry is overbuilt, six years after a pandemic led to wide swaths of industry closures.
Inflation and weak sales performance have put pressure on restaurant-level sales and margins. Many chains closed underperforming restaurants in a bid to cut their losses on weak locations and strengthen their financial profiles while shifting sales to nearby restaurants.
Subway, the fast-food sandwich chain that famously overdeveloped for years, has now closed 9,000 restaurants since 2015 as franchisees walk away from locations as leases and franchise agreements expire.
“We’re adding too many units,” Pawlak said. “We just overbuilt. And that certainly has been a problem in the past. We just haven’t learned from our history.”
There certainly were plenty of bright spots last year, none brighter than the coffee and beverage-snack sectors.
Coffee café sales grew 6.1% last year, nearly double the rate of growth in 2024. But that masked even stronger performance. Pawlak noted that, if Starbucks is not included in that total, the sector’s sales grew 12.2%.
No restaurant chain grew like 7 Brew. The coffee brand has made triple-digit sales growth a habit in recent years as its drive-thru shops open to long lines of thirsty customers. System sales at the chain grew 138% last year after unit count increased by nearly 90%. The brand finished 2025 with 604 restaurants and nearly $1.2 billion in system sales.
Last year, the chain surpassed Scooter’s and Tim Hortons to become the country’s fourth-largest coffee brand, after Starbucks, Dunkin’ and Dutch Bros—which itself grew sales by 22% and generated more than $2.2 billion last year.
The wild success of those two chains plus Swig, the drive-thru dirty soda chain whose sales grew 65% last year, are pushing much of the industry to reconsider the variety of beverages they serve at their restaurants.
McDonald’s and Taco Bell are expanding their beverage lineups, but all kinds of chains are adding new types of drinks to their menus to lure younger, Gen Z consumers that are flocking to chains serving colorful, customizable, mostly cold drinks.
Other beverages and snacks also continue to grow. Such chains, which include a broad array of brands that serve either specialized drinks or treat items like cookies or doughnuts, grew sales by 5.9% last year.
Limited-service Asian and noodle chains likewise generated strong sales in 2025, with 7.8% sales growth that outpaced every other segment in the industry.
The full-service sector was a mixed bag. Total sales among such chains rebounded from a brutal 2024, when its sales grew just 1.3%. Sales at full-service chains grew 2.3% in 2025, thanks largely to strong performance by its biggest players.
Texas Roadhouse, the largest casual-dining chain with $5.9 billion in sales, grew total revenue by 7.2%. Chili’s, which has been on a tear for three years, grew sales by 20.6%, leapfrogging Olive Garden (5.6% system sales growth) to become the second-largest casual-dining brand.
“We know that people will pay more if the experience and the quality and the service is there,” Pawlak said. “Value is not just about price. Those chains that we’re seeing growth or above-average growth figured out that formula.”
Still, he noted, full-service sales aren’t where the sector needs them to be, and a lot of chains struggled badly last year, including brands like TGI Fridays (down 45%), Pinstripes (down 27.5%), On the Border (down 32.5%) and Bar Louiw (down 28%), each of which landed in bankruptcy and closed mass locations.
Several other sectors had so-so to difficult years in 2025, notably limited-service burger chains, which account for about one-fourth of total Top 500 sales. That sector grew sales by just 1.5%. McDonald’s, the largest chain in the U.S., with $55.1 billion in sales, grew that figure by 3%, including the addition of 149 locations, the most growth it’s had in that metric since 2002.
But there were some real struggles. Wendy’s, the second-largest burger chain in the U.S., saw sales fall 5.2% among management and marketing challenges. Dunkin’, the coffee and doughnut chain that grew sales 5.1% last year, leapfrogged Wendy’s to become the 5th largest chain in the U.S.
In the burger sector, for every Culver’s (14% sales growth) and In-N-Out (9.6%) there is a Jack in the Box (down 4.3%) or a Hardee’s (down 5%).
The pizza sector’s struggles worsened last year, again due to weakness among some of its biggest players. Limited-service pizza sector sales declined 0.3% last year, the third straight year of deteriorating overall performance.
While Domino’s (4.8% sales growth) did fine, its biggest rivals did not. Pizza Hut’s system sales fell 8.2% in the U.S. last year. Papa Johns declined 1%. Both are poised to lose more ground this year due to store closures. Little Caesars, the third-largest chain, grew by 1.4%.
Pizza chains, like much of the restaurant industry, have had to contend with a host of challenges, including a customer base that is cutting back on dining frequency. But they have also faced growing competition from third-party delivery companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats that have eaten into their long-term dominance in delivered prepared food to customers’ homes.
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