White Paper
Tapping the Brakes on the Top Restaurant Chains
Growth in aggregate U.S. sales among 2019 Nation’s Restaurant News Top 200 chains was up in their latest completed fiscal years. However, the rising store-level output that contributed to that increase was tempered by significantly slowing unit gains.
Despite the drag on domestic system sales growth from slower unit development or restaurant systems that shrunk outright, the 2019 Top 200 pushed up its aggregate sales by 3.6%, to $302.2 billion in the Latest Year, compared with a 3% bump, to $291.5 billion, in the Preceding Year.
Now in its 46th year, the Top 200 is comprised of chains from across the industry’s various segments ranked by their reported or estimated U.S. systemwide sales for the Latest Year, which for this edition aligns with fiscal years ending between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019.
