Is casual dining now better value for money than fast food?
The fast-food industry has been working hard to remind Americans that they are supposed to be a cheaper than eating at a restaurant. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Subway, and more have entered a "value menu" war after cost complaints.
At the same time, consumers are seeing better value in casual dining restaurants, pizza chains and fast casual restaurants. With value perceptions in flux, YouGov BrandIndex tracks which restaurant brands are winning and losing.
The fall of fast food and rise of casual dining
Fast food restaurants were once the clear choice for value. In March, 2021, one year into pandemic shutdowns, the Value score for the fast-food category hovered around 8.9 compared to about 7.6 for casual dining. Since then, the perceived value of fast food as a category began to slip, becoming comparable to other restaurant categories.
This year, amid rising prices, perceptions of fast food’s value have fallen below casual and fast casual dining categories, as well as specialty restaurants (pizza, coffee, ice cream). In some cases, this drop in perceived value coincided with a rise in prices. For example, McDonald’s reported a rise in profits in the first quarter of this year driven by “strategic menu price increases.”
On the other hand, consumers are seeing much more value in other types of restaurants. On May 14 this year, the Value score of casual dining restaurants reached a high of 8.9, while the score for fast food was 6.6. As of September 26, our most recent data, the casual dining category led fast food 7.8 to 5.2.
America’s best-value eateries
With value perceptions of different kinds of restaurants in flux, category-level analysis can’t predict exactly which restaurants offer the best value for money. The table below shows the top ten restaurants in all categories ranked by Value score over the past month.
Olive Garden remains the restaurant with the best perceived value of any restaurant tracked by BrandIndex with a score of 25.8. Cracker Barrel is the other casual dining restaurant with the highest Value score at 22.9.
Pizza restaurants maintain a strong presence on the list with Domino’s at number two, Pizza Hut at number six, and Little Caesar’s in tenth position after dropping seven ranks in the past year.
Wendy’s is the only restaurant in the fast-food category on the top 10 list, with the eighth-highest Value score of any restaurant.
Most-improved restaurants since last year
Although Olive Garden and Cracker Barrel are the top-ranking casual dining restaurants, they do not account for the rise in perceptions of the category as a whole. This is because a lot of the change in the sector is driven by restaurants that are not in the top ten.
Below is a table showing the most-improved restaurants by Value score.
Of all restaurant brands, Starbucks showed the greatest improvement in Value, moving from -17.2 to -11.8, and helping to boost the score of the Specialty category. While a Value score of -17.2 is low, high marks in other metrics leaves Starbucks' overall brand in a good place. The coffee brand’s Index, which is a composite of six metrics, remains a healthy 12.5.
The Cheesecake Factory saw the greatest rise in Value of all casual dining restaurants, moving from 5.8 to 9.8 over the past year, for a gain of four points. First Watch, a chain that eschews dinner, also saw a big improvement, rose from 2.7 to 5.6. Also in casual dining, Chili’s gained 2.6 points to reach a Value score of 15.0.
There are no fast-food restaurants on the most-improved list, which may augur poorly for the category as a whole.
Poorest-value restaurants
Starbucks, despite great improvements, is still seen as providing poor value by more Americans than any other restaurant brand. With a Value score of -11.8, the coffee chain tops the list of the worst.
Other brands that are seen as providing poor value are those which combine their food offerings with some other entertainment, such as Chuck E. Cheese (-5.2), Hooters (-3.7), Dave and Buster’s (-1.9), and Topgolf (-1.3).
The other poorest-value brands on the bottom ten list are all fast-food chains: Long John Silver’s (-0.9), Quiznos (-0.5), Carl’s Jr (-0.1), Wienerschnitzel (0.3), and Hardee’s (0.5).
YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Value is based on the question, “Which of the following brands do you think represents GOOD/POOR VALUE FOR MONEY?" (US adults)” and delivered as a net score between –100 and + 100. Figures are based on an 8-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.