Maggiano's Little Italy

2017 Top 500: Italian

Italian heavyweight Olive Garden increased sales by 3%, helping to drive the menu category's 1.9% sales growth, to $8.5 billion.

Financing

20 top full-service chains in satisfaction and sales

When it comes to restaurant brands, the sales leaders are not always consumers’ favorites for a variety of reasons. Chains best at parlaying customer satisfaction into sales are hard to beat.

Maggiano's also saw a slide in guest counts.

Unexpected developments abounded in the restaurant business, from a surge in popularity of hurling hatchets to new revelations about how much some restaurants pay.

More than half of the restaurant industry’s $491 billion in sales come from the Top 500 chains. And these giants grew at a modestly stronger rate, both in terms of sales and store counts, than the industry overall. Restaurant Business focused on the leading 250 performers to identify trends for our first-ever special report delivering lessons from Technomic’s annual Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report. This special package includes lessons for all operators from the largest chains by segment, menu category and more.

Business as usual can be anything but, as some restaurateurs pointedly learned this week.

Most of America’s favorite casual-dining concepts for 2017 are upscale or boast a specialized cuisine—only one is a traditional varied-menu concept.

Here are the five restaurant chains that consumers visit the most for special occasions.

Some big chains are reversing themselves on customization, delivery, portioning and new-age staffing moves.

Designed to evoke the spirit of Italian dining, it has a warm atmosphere and traditional fare

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