See If You Can Guess the Top 10 Restaurant Chains in America

Sadly, 'fancy like' Applebee's has quietly slid backwards over the years.

Sometimes you have to look backward to see what’s ahead. And that’s certainly true in the quick-service landscape, as every June, research firm Technomic releases its Top 500 Report listing the top restaurant chains in America by the previous year’s sales. The report detailing 2023’s most successful brands has just been published, and it provides a snapshot of the industry that confirms one thing: we’re not spending with as much abandon as the fast food industry would like.

While sales have grown for a healthy majority of the top 50 businesses, those collective billions of dollars don’t tell the whole story. Nation’s Restaurant News points out that although the Technomic report indicates sales growth across the industry, the rate of that growth lines up pretty cleanly with the price increases on popular fast food menu items over the past year—meaning that we’re not necessarily going out to eat any more than we were before. Indeed, there’s data to suggest that we might be doing just the opposite, pulling back on fast food spending because those dining options no longer feel like a bargain.

Here are the top 10 restaurants in America by sales, according to the report:

1. McDonald’s ($53.1 billion)
2. Starbucks ($31.6 billion)
3. Chick-fil-A ($21.6 billion)
4. Taco Bell ($15 billion)
5. Wendy’s ($12.3 billion)
6. Dunkin’ ($12 billion)
7. Burger King ($11 billion)
8. Subway ($10 billion)
9. Chipotle ($9.9 billion)
10. Domino’s ($9 billion)

As always, the top three in the list are seemingly cemented in place, with sales figures that leapfrog over the nearest competitors. (This is arguably true of Taco Bell, too, whose margin over Wendy’s has only expanded since last year.) The total sales of these top-ranked chains is almost hard to fathom, but not as hard as imagining Starbucks, or any other brand, ever coming close to threatening McDonald’s supremacy.

Related: 78% of Americans Now Think of Fast Food Meals as a ‘Luxury’

Yet if these rankings are virtually unchanged from last year (and they are), each restaurant’s static position in the list is itself an interesting revelation. Dynamic, in-demand brands should be shifting around the board like chess pieces from year to year, duking it out for higher slots; the fact that they haven’t gained or lost any ground speaks to the holding pattern in which most American consumers find themselves, reluctant to rush out and drop disposable income on the latest LTO.

Things can and will change eventually, of course. If you can believe it, just over a decade ago, Subway was once second-place, where Starbucks now sits—but that change in fortune has as much to do with Starbucks’ meteoric rise as Subway’s precipitous downfall, since, back then, Subway only had to gross $11.4 billion to finish second to McDonald’s $34.2 billion.

Related: Here’s What’s Really Going on With Skyrocketing Food Prices

Beyond the top 10, there are similarly few coups to be found. Panda Express has inched its way upward, swapping places in the rankings with Sonic Drive-In to now sit at 12th place. Olive Garden is still doing its thing in 17th place. Applebee’s has quietly slid backwards, just barely losing a spot in the top 20. Ultimately, the numbers appear to indicate that we’re still making restaurant dining a regular part of our lives, but we’re hardly eager to ramp up our visits or our check sizes. Maybe by 2025, we’ll be feeling optimistic enough to drop $12 on anything with “swicy” in the name.

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