From tackling the effects of inflation to finding new ways to delight their guests, restaurants have proved resilient and creative when faced with new challenges.
For the third year, Toast is releasing its Voice of the Restaurant Industry Survey to outline how restaurants respond to macroeconomic challenges, highlight changes in pain points, and check in on how operators feel about the future.
From May 17, 2024 through June 2, 2024, Toast polled 755 restaurant decision-makers in the United States. Survey respondents consist of restaurants with 16 or fewer locations and include a representative market mix of quick-service restaurants (QSRs) and full-service restaurants (FSRs).
While some Toast customers are included in this survey, it is a broad view of independent restaurants. This is a blind survey, meaning respondents did not know that Toast was fielding the study. Insights from this survey are directional and should not be interpreted as precise.
The good news is that overall, operators feel good about the state of the restaurant industry and are optimistic for the future. While challenges persist, some pain points from the past few years have eased.
Highlights:
Most Restaurants Increased Sales in 2024
• Approximately 63% of restaurant operators that manage finances said their profits in 2024 increased compared to last year.
• Only 4% of respondents said their profits decreased compared to last year, and 33% said their profits stayed the same.
COGS Are Key as Hiring Pressures Decline
• In 2024, 16% of operators say analyzing and managing the cost of goods and services and supplier and vendor management are top pain points compared to 12% in 2023.
• Inflation (or the increased costs of goods and services) is still a top pain point for operators (15%).
• Some good news: A lower percentage of operators found sourcing and hiring a top pain point (12%), dropping three percentage points.
Turning Tides: Restaurants Continued Navigating Inflation
• In response to inflation, operators said they: adjusted food suppliers (37%), tracked ingredient prices (36%), increased menu prices (34%), managed a leaner inventory (32%), and reduced their menu sizes (26%).
• While guests may still be feeling the pain of rising menu prices at restaurants, fewer restaurants said that they raised prices this year compared to last year.
Restaurants Order Up Tech, AI, and Dynamic Pricing
• As far as technology goes, 26% of respondents said they’d like to start using new tech to help run their business, which is up seven percentage points from last year.
• Operators are also looking for ways to improve their business using AI (52%), which rose by seven percentage points from last year. They hope to implement AI in several ways, including optimizing menu performance (40%), making recommendations for guests (39%), benchmarking their business performance against their peers (38%), optimizing pricing (38%), and analyzing their business performance (35%).
Growth & Expansion On The Menu for 2025
• Restaurant operators are feeling similarly confident about opening a new location within the next six to 12 months.
• 24% of respondents said they hope to open a location within six months, up two percentage points from last year. 28% of respondents said they hope to open a location in the next 12 months, which is similar to what we saw in our 2023 survey.
• As restaurants look to the next 12 months, they anticipate placing a greater emphasis on revenue streams such as on-premise dining, off-premise dining, and catering.
