U.S. consumers love them some steak.
They certainly kept flocking to chains where beef is the center of the plate in 2023, according to data from the Technomic Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report. Fine-dining steak chains’ sales last year grew 7.8% on average in 2023, even though it was supposedly a down year for the segment. It was only slightly worse (6.5%) for casual-dining steak brands.
Those sales increases boosted unit volumes. The three chains with the highest average unit volumes, led by Mastro’s and its $13.8 million AUVs, and six of the top 10 all serve steak.
Here are the chains with the highest average unit volumes.
That said, fine-dining steak chains are supposed to have high unit volumes. The average fine-dining chain generates nearly $8 million per unit, meaning Mastro’s AUVs are 75% higher than average.
The more impressive results are further down the list, when we get to the limited-service chains with the highest AUVs.
Portillo’s boasts the highest unit volumes of any limited-service chain at $9.1 million. That is more than four times the average fast-casual chain AUV, based on Technomic data.
Then there is Chick-fil-A, which in 2023 had average unit volumes of $7.5 million. The chicken sandwich chain’s unit volumes were nearly seven times the $1.1 million average AUVs for fast-food brands.
If we narrow the data down to just limited-service chicken chains—filtering out all the low-volume concepts like frozen yogurt brands and sub-sandwich chains—Chick-fil-A still generates three times the typical average unit volumes.
Chick-fil-A is also one of just four limited-service chains with more than $5 million average unit volumes. The other two are Raising Cane’s ($5.7 million) and In-N-Out ($5.4 million).
The strongest-performing limited-service chains balance both strong unit volumes and unit growth.
Cane’s, for instance, grew sales 20.5% last year, thanks to a combination of increased unit volumes and a 12.5% increase in unit count. In-N-Out has notably slow unit growth: Less than 4% last year, lower than a lot of much larger chains. But it still grew total sales by nearly 13%.
On the other end of the spectrum, the lowest average unit volume chains are typically frozen dessert concepts such as Sweetfrog ($280,000 per location) or Marble Slab Creamery ($310,000) or snack concepts such as Daylight Donuts ($230,000) or Cinnabon ($295,000).
But there are a couple of notable, low-volume chains: Quiznos, which at one point was a Top 50 restaurant chain, now has fewer than 150 locations. Its unit volumes last year were just $425,000, one of the lowest such numbers among non-snack or dessert concepts. Sales fell by 14.5% last year and it is now No. 460 on the Top 500.
Subway, meanwhile, generated $490,000. Those volumes have increased each of the past three years, but it remains one of the lowest-volume restaurant chains in the U.S.
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