Toast released its latest Restaurant Trends Report, providing insight into the state of the U.S. restaurant industry through an analysis of aggregated data. The Toast platform serves approximately 148,000 restaurant locations as of June 30, 2025.
Toast asked: How are restaurants performing this summer compared to last year?
To find out, they compared preliminary same-store transaction data from June 1, 2025, through July 15, 2025 to transaction data from the same restaurants from June 2, 2024, to July 16, 2024, to ensure both time periods covered similar days of the week. All restaurant types were included in this analysis, and Toast used a cohort of same-store customers that were on the platform from April 1, 2024, through July 15, 2025.
Some highlights included:
- Total transactions were up slightly, and guests ordered a similar number of items per ticket
- 24 states grew transaction counts compared to last year
- 13 states' transaction counts were flat
- 13 states (plus Washington, D.C.) experienced declines in transaction counts
- Alaska led the surge with a 5% increase in summer restaurant transactions, while Maine and South Dakota each had 4% growth
- States like Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, and West Virginia experienced a 2% decline in transactions
- East Coast states generally show positive or stable performance, contrasting with some Midwest and Western areas
Digging deeper, Toast identified 20 summer destination cities to compare their performance this year with that of the previous year. They found:
- Cities that experienced the largest transaction growth were Naples, Florida; Portland, Maine; and Chicago, Illinois
- Cities that experienced the biggest declines in transactions were Denver, Colorado; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Las Vegas, Nevada
Toast attributed the changes in restaurant performance this summer to several factors, including inflation, discretionary spending, a decline in international summer travelers, and inclement weather.
View the full report here.
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