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Check out the 2024 Technomic Top 500 ranking of the largest restaurant chains

From the editor: This year’s ranking of the largest U.S. restaurant chains by system sales reveals winners and losers and a few warning signs. Here’s an early look at RB’s coverage of the report.
Top 500
Illustration by Jordan Kay

Nothing provides the snapshot of the state of the restaurant industry quite like the Technomic Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report.

This year’s ranking is no different. Sales rose 7.8%, which is good. But that didn’t keep pace with pricing, which is bad. It illustrates the difficult environment the industry is in right now.

This week, Restaurant Business published the ranking of the 500 largest chains. This year, we include all 500 chains on the list for the first time ever.  

We’ve been providing coverage of the ranking for weeks and have much more in store.

Check out our initial report on the list and its results here.

We’ve also written about specific sectors, including quick-service restaurants and casual-dining chains.

Read our feature on Popeyes and how it passed KFC. Or take a look at our feature on mall-based restaurant chains, which have, perhaps surprisingly, staged something of a comeback.

Check out my interview with Technomic Managing Principal Joe Pawlak on the ranking.

And here are a few galleries, including:

The 10 largest restaurant chains.

The 10 largest casual-dining chains.

The restaurant chains that closed the most locations.

We will have much more to come in the next several days, including looks at family-dining concepts, fast-casual brands and more in-depth features and profiles.

Be sure to register for the webinar that I will do alongside Technomic Managing Principal Joe Pawlak and my colleague Sam Oches, editor-in-chief of Nation’s Restaurant News.

For more information on the ranking itself, head over to our sister company Technomic.

Members help make our journalism possible. Become a Restaurant Business member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.

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