Recently Published Data Reveals Which Restaurant Chains are Leading, Lagging and Growing

While the Top 500 chains outpaced emerging chains in 2017 in both overall sales growth and unit growth, the limited-service chains ranked 501-1,500 outperformed the Top 500 LSR chains, seeing sales grow by 4.5% versus the 3.9% observed by chains in the Top 500.

CHICAGO -- Results for the highly anticipated 2018 Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report are in, revealing that Top 500 brands posted a cumulative 2017 sales growth of 3.1%, down from 3.8% growth the prior year. The full report is now available, providing foodservice professionals with sales and unit performance and year-over-year growth for the leading restaurant chains.

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"We expect to see a lot of the same challenges that operators were facing in 2017 carry over into 2018," said Joe Pawlak, Technomic managing principal. "Operators will be tasked with finding new ways to steal share from the competition and the rise of technology in foodservice will likely play a part."

As an extension of the report, Technomic tracks sales, unit counts and locations, key contacts and more for an additional 1,000 emerging chains in the U.S. Details about all 1,500 chains are available on Ignite, Technomic's cloud-based single source for all things foodservice.

Key findings include:

• While Technomic's Top 500 is essentially evenly split between limited- and full-service operators, 65% of chains ranked 501-1,500 are classified as limited service
• Chains ranked 501-1,500 accounted for approximately $21 billion in sales and 21,800 locations in 2017
• Chains poised to break into the Top 500 based on sales and unit growth include California Fish Grill (ranked 504), Keke's Breakfast Cafe (ranked 508) and Jimmy's Egg (ranked 530)

While the Top 500 chains outpaced emerging chains in 2017 in both overall sales growth and unit growth, the limited-service chains ranked 501-1,500 outperformed the Top 500 LSR chains, seeing sales grow by 4.5% versus the 3.9% observed by chains in the Top 500.

To learn more about this and other industry reports from Technomic, please visit Technomic.com.

SOURCE Technomic Inc.