Addressable Market For US Restaurant Industry Is Just Over 238,000 Locations: Research

May 16, 2024 by Dave Haynes

Tech vendors often talk about the addressable market size for the business verticals that they’re focused on, so it is likely handy for the many, many companies looking to introduce or expand digital signage and related tech in the restaurant and food services sectors to understand the size of the largest QSR, fast casual and more formal restaurant chains in the biggest global market for them, the United States.

Datassential’s annual top 500 restaurant chains report says there were 238,152 locations in the US by the end of 2023, up 2.1 per cent for the year.

By total units, the top three are Subway (20,133), Starbucks (16,346) and McDonald’s (13,449). McDonald’s has the largest system-wide sales at $52.9 billion, with #2 being Starbucks ($29.9 billion) and #3 being Chick-fil-A ($21.5 billion).

Domino’s Pizza is now larger than Burger King with 6,854 locations nationwide.

The fastest-growing chain, unfamiliar to me, was 7 Brew, a drive-thru coffee chain based out of Arkansas. Before you say “Huh?”, that state is also home to Walmart. It grew by 374%, which of course is easier to grow exponentially when you are small. 7 Brew has 223 sites. Other smaller restaurant chains with big growth: The Peach Cobbler Factory (358%) and Hangry Joe’s Hot Chicken (282%).

Chains focused on salad/healthy choices saw unit growth of 17% in 2023, followed by chicken restaurants, dessert/snack chains and coffee chains.

Datassential, by the way, is self-described as a “global food and beverage intelligence platform providing guidance on trends, competitive benchmarking, and sales intelligence.”