CHICAGO – The fast-casual
restaurant industry is living up to its name by outpacing other restaurant
industry segments, a new report from Technomic finds. According to Technomic’s
Top 150 Fast-Casual Chain Restaurant Report, fast casual has captured 14% of
the total $223 billion limited-service restaurant segment.
Fast-casual sales
increased 13% in 2012, and the largest chains—those which each made more than
$325 million last year—did even better, growing by 16%. Fast-casual restaurants
continue to outperform both quick-service and full-service establishments and
post strong gains even while the rest of the industry is having a more
difficult time.
“Fast casual has become a
$31-billion segment since Chipotle began reinventing fast food 20 years ago,”
said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, in a press
release. “Consumers today want quality offerings made quickly. Segments like
burger, sandwich and Mexican have done a great job delivering on quality,
fresh, gourmet, and made-on-demand offerings. There are still areas of growth
in the fast-casual segment for operators to adopt these ingredients for success
and become viable in the fast-casual landscape.”
Looking forward, the trend
is expected to continue. Whereas the compound annual growth rate for all
limited-service restaurants is 4.5% (2012 through 2017), fast-casual operators
are expected to grow 10%, on average, over the same period.
Bakery cafés continued to
lead all menu categories among the Top 150 fast-casual chains, with U.S.
systemwide sales of $6.1 billion, up more than 10% over 2011. The Mexican and
sandwich categories were second and third largest, with U.S. systemwide sales
of $5.7 and $4.4 billion, respectively. The categories that saw the fastest
sales growth were sandwich (up 17%) and Asian/noodle (up 16%). The burger and
sandwich clusters experienced the highest unit growth, growing outlets by 14%
and 13%, respectively.