Skip to content
Signals from Restaurant Business
- Restaurant operators turn to AI drive-thrus and menu engineering as food costs run 34% above pre-pandemic
- Applebee's sues franchisee Apple Texas, demands divestiture of 115-unit Logan's Roadhouse chain
- Fat Brands creditors challenge $1B lender sale, claim $195M in manager advances outranks secured debt
- Chains lean on Mother's Day promos as 80M diners expected, but March traffic slid back into the red
- Popeyes posts worst quarter in 20 years as Q1 same-store sales crater 6.5%
- Noodles & Co. posts Q1 SSS +9.1% as 60 closures and ops reset drive 460bps margin lift
- Naya rolls out Chef's Creations to ease Lebanese menu for first-timers across 44 units
- Texas Roadhouse posts 7.1% comp sales as beef inflation cools to 6.2%
- Burger King president took 1,500 customer calls; AI signage audit sweeps 7,000 US stores
- CFO-turned-CEO Scott Drake maps Chuck E. Cheese's next act: new HQ, tech reboot, fresh concepts
- Chipotle credits AI search visibility for record Cinco de Mayo sales
- Burger King's $1.7B turnaround clears McDonald's by 190 bps without leaning on deep discounts
- McDonald's defends value playbook as franchisee margins crack under beef, gas costs
- Chefs turn to ChatGPT for menu R&D, from Piada's Summer Fresca to Sodexo's profit lift
- Dutch Bros' 2.4% hire rate beats Harvard as chain races to 2,029 shops by 2029
- Applebee's pulls managers out of kitchens to court guests as value diners pull back
- Sweetgreen's Q1 craters 13%; wraps platform is the bowl-weary bet
- $30 Cocktails Push Drinkers Home as U.S. Alcohol Consumption Hits 90-Year Low
- Snowbird leans on RATIONAL combi tech to plate 12,000 daily meals at 11,000 feet
- Shake Shack shares crater 30% as Q1 EPS misses despite 4.6% same-store sales gain