Every year, Nation’s Restaurant News and Datassential partner to present The Top 500, the definitive sales ranking of restaurants in America.
We also look at unit and estimated sales per unit (ESPU) data in this report.
Three of the restaurants with the fastest-growing ESPUs in 2022 were also among the 10 biggest brands by this metric, but many chains grew without hitting the very top rankings. The highest ESPU among the bunch is $12.1 million, and the lowest is $1.2 million — showing that a chain of truly any size or type can achieve huge growth on the unit level.
Meanwhile, in 2022, the ten restaurant chains with the highest ESPU in the U.S. also all saw year-over-year growth — two grew ESPU by more than 51%, but each grew by at least 1.9% and had ESPU of at least $8.1 million.
Managing editor Leigh Anne Zinsmeister breaks down the data.
