Dinner restaurants sit within a large food-away-from-home market shaped by household budgets, inflation, takeout habits, and the distinction between full-service and limited-service dining. The figures below show how spending changed from 2018 through 2024, what the National Restaurant Association projected for 2025, and how restaurant businesses and workers fit into the broader industry.
Contents
- Household spending on food away from home
- Full-service and fast-food spending
- Foodservice market segments in 2024
- Geographic and seasonal sales patterns
- Restaurant industry size and outlook
- Takeout, experience, and value
- Restaurant businesses, workers, and wages
Household spending on food away from home
The Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023 report shows how strongly restaurant spending moved with the disruption of 2020 and the recovery that followed. In 2018, food away from home represented 43.2% of total food dollars, while food at home represented 56.8%. By 2020, the away-from-home share had fallen to 32.5%, the lowest point in the 2019–2023 span reported by the survey. It recovered to 36.6% in 2021, 39.0% in 2022, and 39.4% in 2023.
Average annual food-away-from-home spending followed the same broad pattern. The reported amount was $3,526 per consumer unit in 2019, dropped to $2,375 in 2020, rebounded to $3,030 in 2021, reached $3,639 in 2022, and rose to $3,933 in 2023. The year-over-year increases were 27.6% in 2021 versus 2020, 20.1% in 2022 versus 2021, and 8.1% in 2023 versus 2022.
For dinner restaurants, the full-service category is especially relevant because it includes meals where customers typically receive table service and a broader dining experience. The spending figures do not isolate dinner occasions, however, so they should be read as annual consumer-unit spending across the reported food-away-from-home category rather than as a dinner-only measure.
The same BLS report put total annual food spending at $9,985 per consumer unit in 2023. Food at home accounted for $6,053 of that total. Earlier food-at-home spending was $4,643 in 2019, $4,935 in 2020, $5,259 in 2021, and $5,703 in 2022. Together, these measures show that restaurant spending recovered while grocery spending also rose, rather than one category simply replacing the other.
Full-service and fast-food spending
The 2023 BLS figures separate food-away-from-home spending at fast-food restaurants from spending at full-service restaurants. Fast-food expenditures were $1,726.50 per consumer unit, compared with $1,484.92 at full-service restaurants. The share of consumer units reporting purchases was 58.44% for fast food and 34.36% for full-service restaurants.
The longer comparison is different from the one-year ranking. From 2019 to 2023, fast-food spending rose 41.1%, from $1,223.80 to $1,726.50 per consumer unit. Full-service spending declined 0.7%, from $1,495.68 to $1,484.92. Thus, the category with the larger 2023 average was also the category with the stronger five-year increase in this dataset.
| Measure | Fast food | Full-service restaurants |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 spending per consumer unit | $1,726.50 | $1,484.92 |
| 2023 purchasers’ spending per consumer unit | $2,955.33 | $4,325.43 |
| 2023 share reporting purchases | 58.44% | 34.36% |
| 2019–2023 spending change | +41.1% | −0.7% |
The purchaser-only amounts add another perspective. In 2023, fast-food purchasers spent $2,955.33 per consumer unit, while full-service restaurant purchasers spent $4,325.43. These amounts are conditional on reporting purchases in the category; they are not averages for every consumer unit.
The pandemic-era changes were also uneven. Fast-food spending fell 16.1% year over year in 2020. Full-service spending fell 36.6% in 2020 and then rebounded 35.7% in 2021. The sharper decline in full-service spending is consistent with the category’s greater exposure to sit-down dining, but the supplied figures describe the change rather than establish its cause.
Prices rose across both restaurant categories in 2023. The CPI-U for food away from home was 354.256, up 7.1% year over year. The CPI-U for limited-service meals and snacks was 232.597, up 7.0%, while the CPI-U for full-service meals and snacks was 218.353, up 6.1%. For comparison, the CPI-U for food at home was 302.929, up 5.0%. These are consumer price index measures for 2023, not restaurant revenue forecasts.
Foodservice market segments in 2024
USDA Economic Research Service figures for 2024 place full-service and limited-service restaurants close together in the national food-away-from-home market. Full-service restaurants accounted for 36.4% of food-away-from-home spending, and limited-service restaurants accounted for 36.3%. Together, the two segments represented 72.6%. Other food-away-from-home outlets accounted for the remaining 27.4%.
| 2024 market segment | Share of food-away-from-home spending |
|---|---|
| Full-service restaurants | 36.4% |
| Limited-service restaurants | 36.3% |
| Full-service plus limited-service | 72.6% |
| Other outlets | 27.4% |
The USDA ERS reported national per-capita food-away-from-home purchases of $4,275 in 2024. This is a national per-capita measure, distinct from the BLS consumer-unit spending figures for 2023. A consumer unit and a person are different measurement bases, and the two statistics should not be treated as interchangeable.
For a dinner-focused business, the full-service share provides a useful market frame: sit-down restaurants represented 36.4% of national food-away-from-home spending in 2024. It does not specify how much of that spending occurred at dinner, nor does it identify bistros separately. Bistro cooking therefore belongs within the full-service context without being a separately measured category in these figures.
Geographic and seasonal sales patterns
The 2024 USDA ERS figures also show substantial geographic variation in per-capita food-away-from-home sales. Washington, DC recorded $11,364 per capita, followed by Hawaii at $7,131 and Nevada at $7,007. California recorded $5,504 per capita and was the fourth-highest state value cited in the supplied figures.
These amounts describe sales geography, not household income or restaurant profitability. Washington, DC is reported as a district, while Hawaii, Nevada, and California are states, so the geography should remain explicit when comparing the values. The figures also do not provide a national ranking for every state or explain the reasons behind the differences.
Seasonality appeared in the 2024 average daily sales figures. Full-service sales peaked in December at $1,584 million per day and were lowest in January at $1,307 million. Limited-service sales peaked in June at $1,584 million per day and were lowest in January at $1,337 million.
| 2024 average daily sales | Lowest month | Highest month |
|---|---|---|
| Full-service restaurants | January: $1,307 million | December: $1,584 million |
| Limited-service restaurants | January: $1,337 million | June: $1,584 million |
The highest reported daily figure was therefore shared by full-service restaurants in December and limited-service restaurants in June. The monthly pattern differs by segment: full-service sales were strongest at the end of the year, while limited-service sales were strongest in early summer. These are average daily sales for the named months, not single-day records.
Restaurant industry size and outlook
The National Restaurant Association’s 2025 State of the Restaurant Industry projected $1.5 trillion in restaurant industry sales during 2025. The same projection put total restaurant and foodservice employment at 15.9 million people and anticipated 200,000 net new restaurant jobs.
The prior National Restaurant Association 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry projected $1.1 trillion in restaurant industry sales and more than 15.7 million restaurant and foodservice employees for 2024. These are projections for their respective years, not measured results presented as historical totals. The difference between the two projections should not be read as a one-year realized increase without a comparable actual series.
A separate National Restaurant Association national-statistics figure says that eating and drinking places directly contributed $1.4 trillion in output to the U.S. economy in 2022, expressed in 2024 dollars. Eating and drinking places directly supported 14.2 million employees in 2022. This is a direct economic contribution measure and uses a different year and framing from the industry sales projections.
For restaurant operators, scale remains mostly small. In 2024, 9 in 10 restaurants had fewer than 50 employees, and 7 in 10 were single-unit operations, according to National Restaurant Association national statistics. Those figures describe the structure of the restaurant base rather than the size of sales at an individual dinner restaurant.
Takeout, experience, and value
Restaurant demand includes both on-premises dining and food taken away. The National Restaurant Association’s 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry reported that 52% of consumers considered ordering takeout from a restaurant an essential part of their lifestyle. The figure was 67% among millennials and 63% among Gen Z adults.
The 2025 State of the Restaurant Industry added a measure of what customers value when they do dine out. Among full-service customers, 64% said the dining experience mattered more than the price of the meal. Among limited-service customers, 47% said the dining experience mattered more than price. The figures suggest a larger experience-over-price response in full-service dining, but they do not identify which parts of the experience mattered most.
Value still featured prominently in operator plans. In 2025, 47% of restaurant operators planned to add new discounts, deals, or value promotions, according to the National Restaurant Association. This operator measure is not the same as the customer measures above: it reports planned business actions, not customer preferences or realized sales.
For a bistro, these figures place dinner service inside a mixed-use market. Customers may value the experience of a full-service meal while also using takeout as a regular part of life. Operators’ planned promotions show that price and value remain active considerations even where experience carries greater reported weight.
Restaurant businesses, workers, and wages
The restaurant workforce has a strong entry-level pathway. National Restaurant Association national statistics report that 8 in 10 restaurant owners started in entry-level positions and 9 in 10 restaurant managers started in entry-level positions in 2024. In the same year, 63% of adults had worked in the restaurant industry, and 41% of restaurant firms were owned by minorities.
Full-service waitstaff wages provide one available labor-market measure. In 2024, the median wage was $27.00 per hour. The lower quartile was $19.00 per hour and the upper quartile was $41.50 per hour. A median divides the reported wage distribution into two halves, while the lower and upper quartiles mark points below which 25% and 75% of the distribution fall; these figures do not state total compensation or tips separately.
The business and labor statistics help define the operating environment around dinner restaurants. Most restaurants were small employers, many were single-unit operations, and the industry offered a common entry point into ownership and management. At the same time, full-service service work showed a wide spread between the cited lower quartile, median, and upper quartile wages.
Taken together, the reported measures describe a dinner-restaurant market that recovered after 2020, remains divided between full-service and limited-service formats, varies sharply by geography and month, and combines experience-led demand with ongoing value pressure. The source years and measurement bases differ, so each statistic is most useful when read with its stated geography, period, and definition.