Toast, the all-in-one digital platform built for restaurants, released its Q3 2025 Restaurant Trends Report. The report is an analysis of aggregated data from selected cohorts of restaurants in select U.S. states on the Toast platform, which serves approximately 156,000 restaurant locations as of Sept. 30, 2025.
The report revealed that in-person hospitality is still king, but the "rules" of dining out are clearly shifting. Here's a snapshot of how diner behavior is evolving.
Solo Dining
Tables for one are booming, with reservations for a single diner spiking 22% in Q3 2025 compared to Q3 2024.
While more people are treating themselves to a meal out alone, single diners still accounted for less than 1% of total booked reservations.
Reservations
Reservations are up across the board, increasing 8% year-over-year on a same-store basis. However, not all diners are showing up. Cancellations were up 7% compared to last year, and approximately 2% of booked reservations were no-shows.
When to Dine
Consumers are favoring earlier dayparts, with the 9 a.m. breakfast slot seeing the biggest year-over-year jump in reservations, up 19%. Meanwhile, the 4 p.m. "early bird" dinner slot also saw a significant increase, up 15%.
On the other side of the coin, late-night visits—those booked for 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.—both dipped by 1% year over year.
This move to earlier dining times is also reflected in major cities. At full-service restaurants in Q3 compared to last year, the early evening (4 p.m. - 7 p.m.) appears to be a key growth area for several cities, while late-night traffic has declined in many. For example:
- Minneapolis: Increase came at 5 p.m. (+5%), 6 p.m. (+10%), and 7 p.m. (+7%), but sharp declines marked late-night, 10 p.m. (-9%) and 11 p.m. (-12%).
- Chicago: Consistent growth in transactions from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., but a 1% dip at 11 p.m.
- New York City: Traffic grew 3% at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and 6 p.m., before leveling off to 0% growth at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Two of these cities also saw the greatest full-service restaurant transaction growth, with Chicago up 3% year-over-year and New York City up 2%.
The day of the week that saw the biggest gain in reservations was Tuesday, with bookings jumping 15% year-over-year, marking the largest daily increase of any day. While this may indicate that diners are breaking from traditional weekend-only dining patterns, Saturday (26% of weekly reservations), Friday (21%), and Sunday (15%) still have the most booked reservations.
Tipping
After hitting a seven-year low last quarter (19.1%), tips at full-service restaurants saw a small recovery in Q3 to an average of 19.2%. Compare this to 2021, when tips peaked at 19.8% multiple times.
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