Financing

A look at which chains stood out in 2021

A Deeper Dive: The podcast features Technomic’s Joe Pawlak, talking about how big chains were able to recover so quickly from the pandemic.

What chains recovered the most from the pandemic?

This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast “A Deeper Dive” features Joe Pawlak, managing principal with RB sister company Technomic, to talk about the latest Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report.

The 500 largest restaurants grew sales by 18% in 2021—and more than 8% over 2019, effectively recovering from the pandemic. They generated $361.2 billion in total sales.

Pawlak talks about why they’ve been able to grow more quickly than anybody anticipated.

He talks extensively about what sectors did best, notably fine dining along with some of the biggest chains in the U.S.

Among the companies featured in this podcast are McDonald’s, Burger King and, of course, Chick-fil-A.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe on Spotify.

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.

Multimedia

Exclusive Content

Financing

Despite their complaints, customers keep flocking to Chipotle

The Bottom Line: The chain continued to be a juggernaut last quarter, with strong sales and traffic growth, despite frequent social media complaints about shrinkflation or other challenges.

Operations

Hitting resistance elsewhere, ghost kitchens and virtual concepts find a happy home in family dining

Reality Check: Old-guard chains are finding the alternative operations to be persistently effective side hustles.

Financing

The Tijuana Flats bankruptcy highlights the dangers of menu miscues

The Bottom Line: The fast-casual chain’s problems following new menu debuts in 2021 and 2022 show that adding new items isn’t always the right idea.

Trending

More from our partners