Toast's last Quarterly Restaurant Trends Report had much to say about the tipping landscape. And while Toast's new Q2 report found that tipping dropped a tenth across all restaurant types, it also had a lot to say about which dayparts are popular with consumers.
According to Toast's report—which is an analysis of aggregated data from selected cohorts of restaurants and in select U.S. cities on the Toast platform, which serves approximately 120,000 restaurant locations— found that consumer spending at quick-service restaurants in 20 U.S. cities saw a noticeable shift to breakfast and away from dinner and late-night transactions.
Toast compared same-store transactions at quick-service restaurants in 20 U.S. cities from Q2 2024 to Q2 2023. In the majority of the cities, restaurants saw an increase in transaction counts during breakfast hours (4 a.m. to 11 a.m.) and a decrease in transactions during dinner hours (4 p.m. to 9 p.m.) and late night (9 p.m. to 12 a.m.).
View the chart below to see the differences in spending across the 20 cities:
When it comes to lunch, the results in the chart above are mixed, with Philadelphia (+7%) and Atlanta (-7%) having the largest changes compared to last year.
Toast also explored the change in prices for lunch items from this time last year to now. Given inflation and the state of rising costs, it comes as no surprise that there were some jumps in prices.
To gauge the cost of going out to lunch for consumers compared to last year, Toast examined same-store sales at quick-service restaurants on the Toast platform among 13 different food types: tacos, fries, hot dogs, dumplings, soups/stews, quesadillas, chicken tenders, burritos, sandwiches/wraps, salads, burgers, bowls, and noodles/ramen:
The data showed the most expensive items were:
- Burgers
- Bowls
- Noodles/ramen
And the least expensive items were:
- Tacos
- Fries
- Hot dogs
Cheaper did not equate to a lower increase in price, however. Despite being one of the cheaper options, tacos saw a +5.9% increase in pricing, higher than even burgers (+4.6%) and bowls (+4.6%), two of the most expensive options.
Of the most popular items in the studied food types across the 50 states, sandwiches came out on top as the most popular in 44 states. Of the exceptions, tacos are more popular than sandwiches in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Texas. Bowls are most popular in Hawaii, and salads are the most popular item in Utah.
View Toast's full report here.
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