The QSR Pro editorial team covers the quick service restaurant industry with in-depth analysis, data-driven reporting, and operator-first perspective.
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Showing 281–300 of 861 articles
Guillermo Perales built Sun Holdings into a 1,800-unit franchise empire. Now he's buying distressed restaurant brands outright, betting that franchise operational discipline can rescue chains that corporate ownership couldn't.
Nearly half of all quick-service restaurant visits are now solo occasions, up from 31% four years ago. The chains adapting their menus, store formats, and loyalty tech to single-guest economics are pulling ahead.
From Shake Shack's GLP-1 friendly 'Good Fit' menu to Smoothie King's dedicated drug-user section, chains are engineering menus around a growing cohort of Americans on weight loss medications. Operators who ignore this shift do so at their own risk.
A bankruptcy court approved $184 million in debtor-in-possession financing for Fat Brands while simultaneously pushing out CEO Andy Wiederhorn and his three sons. With qualified bids due April 24 and an auction set for April 28, more than 2,200 franchise locations across 18 brands now face a compressed ownership transition timeline.
A UC Santa Cruz economist spent months interviewing franchise owners across California and found what aggregate BLS data can't show: hours cut 11.5% at one McDonald's group, menu prices up 8-12%, and a capital spending shift toward kiosks and mobile ordering. The findings carry serious implications for operators in states weighing their own $20 wage floors.
Audivi AI and Quail Digital have announced a global partnership that ships voice AI ordering software pre-loaded onto Quail's drive-thru hardware platform. The move targets the integration complexity that has kept mid-market and independent operators on the sidelines of voice AI adoption, and signals a broader shift in how the technology reaches the market.
HHS Secretary RFK Jr. announced a plan to eliminate eight synthetic food dyes by the end of 2026, but only two face formal bans. The remaining six are subject to 'voluntary cooperation' from manufacturers, creating a compliance gray zone that will ripple through QSR supply chains in Q3 and Q4 2026.
Washington D.C. is heading toward a ballot initiative that would raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour by 2029 and eliminate the tip credit entirely by 2031. For restaurant operators, both inside and outside the District, this is the labor cost scenario they've been dreading.
Yum Brands published its first Food Trends Report, pulling data from Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Habit Burger Grill across 59,000 locations. The report spotlights craveable drinks and sauce customization as the next traffic drivers, offering operators a data-backed lens on where consumer demand is heading.
CES 2026 put zero-staff retail, robotic food prep, and AI-driven operations on full display. For QSR operators, the question isn't whether these technologies are coming -- it's how fast the unit economics will justify deployment.
FAT Brands is pushing Fatburger into France with 30 units targeted by 2028, starting with a new location near Paris. The expansion raises a pointed question for the industry: can a financially distressed franchisor build a winning international presence while fighting through Chapter 11 at home?
President Trump signed an executive order removing tariffs on select food and beverage imports, including beef, coffee, tropical fruit, and fertilizers. Operators running beef-forward menus or premium coffee programs get real relief. Chicken, pork, and dairy operators are still on their own.
KFC, the chain that invented fast-food fried chicken in America, has fallen to fifth place among US chicken chains. Consumer spending dropped 4% to $4.34 billion as Raising Cane's and Wingstop surged past the Yum Brands stalwart, exposing structural problems no LTO can fix.
OneRyan Global, the family investment office of tax consulting titan Brint Ryan, has acquired a controlling interest in Mr. Gatti's Pizza, capping a transition to a fully franchised system and positioning the 57-year-old pizza buffet brand for an unconventional expansion into Walmart stores and convenience locations.
A College Station chicken finger brand that once operated a single restaurant near Texas A&M is now chasing statewide saturation. A 44-unit deal with C5 Restaurants signals Layne's may be on a trajectory similar to Raising Cane's early expansion years. Whether the crowded chicken QSR segment leaves room for another ascent is the central question operators and investors should be asking.
SSCP Management's quiet acquisition of Logan's Roadhouse from SPB Hospitality is the latest chapter in the struggling steakhouse chain's ownership saga. With this being SSCP's third distressed-brand buy in five years, the question for investors and franchisees is whether the collect-and-rehabilitate strategy produces real turnarounds or just delays inevitable decline.
Zaxby's quietly surpassed 1,000 restaurants in January 2026, operating across 22 states with 60+ new openings planned for the year. The brand's Modern Farmhouse prototype and Goldman Sachs-backed expansion push raise a core question for the industry: can a deeply regional chain scale to national relevance without losing what made it work?
Portillo's raised $466 million in its 2021 IPO on promises of 920 locations. Four years later, the stock has lost 90% of its value, a CEO is gone, and an activist investor forced a full strategic pivot. The story of what went wrong is a lesson every regional chain operator needs to read.
Public restaurant equities have split into two distinct tiers. Growth names like CAVA and Wingstop command premium valuations on the strength of traffic gains and unit expansion; legacy QSR and casual dining stocks are trading at distressed multiples or heading private. Here is what separates the winners from the losers, and whether current prices are justified.
Texas Roadhouse posted 3.5% comp growth in Q1 2026 while peers bleed traffic, opened its 50th Bubba's 33, and keeps proving that from-scratch food and equity-driven management are the most durable competitive advantages in casual dining. Here's what operators at every price point can learn from their model.