Dive Brief:
- Chili’s and Wingstop both saw significant growth in consumer spending in 2025, propelling them upwards in Circana’s 2026 Definitive U.S. Ranking, which lists the top 50 chains by consumer spend.
- Chili’s rose eight spots to become the 11th-largest chain thanks to a 19% increase in spending, while Wingstop jumped five spots to 17th thanks to a 14% increase in spend. Shake Shack was the only new brand on the list, at 47th place, which saw a 13% increase in spend.
- Circana noted that spending is dramatically concentrated within the top 50 brands, which account for 61% of all consumer restaurant spending but only 24% of locations. McDonald's, Starbucks and Chick-fil-A account for about one-third of the spending, or $107 billion, among the top 50 brands the report found.
Dive Insight:
The concentration of sales among the top few brands makes the ascension of Wingstop and Chili’s impressive. The list, despite changes within it, has also been fairly stable over time. Circana noted that 47 of the 50 brands listed in its first edition in 2019 remain in the dataset.
In 2024, challenger chicken brands were particularly successful — Wingstop and Raising Cane’s surpassed KFC in total sales that year — while 2025 saw spending growth across more diverse menu categories. Dutch Bros, for instance, saw its total consumer spending rise by 22%, the largest proportional increase of any brand in the rankings.
Chili’s and Wingstop’s success were not driven by the performance of a single menu category, Circana noted. Instead, both focused on elements of the customer experience.
“Chili’s delights its customers with unbeatable value for their money and being a kid-friendly environment, whereas Wingstop excels at food quality and flavor,” according to the report.
Chili’s sales growth and value deals have been a major storyline in the restaurant industry for the last three years, but the brand’s spending growth was made more remarkable by the fact that its store base actually shrank last year. Chili’s isn’t necessarily planning for new unit growth until 2028, meaning its success has come at existing units.
Wingstop, by contrast, saw its location count rise by 21% in 2025, according to Circana’s calculations, more than offsetting three quarters of declining same-store sales.
Both brands likely have more room to grow, as their annual buyer penetration remains low. Only 19% of consumers measured by Circana dined at a Chili’s restaurant. This was strong for a casual dining brand — only Olive Garden, with 20% market penetration, surpassed it. But Chili’s lags far behind even the least penetrated of the top 10 brands, Domino’s, which had 34% annual buyer penetration.
Wingstop’s annual buyer penetration is roughly 23% of consumers. That level of brand exposure lags far behind Chick-fil-A, which led the chicken QSR segment with 53% annual buyer penetration in 2025.
