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Fast casual extended its winning streak into April 2026, while shifting visit durations across all restaurant formats point to deeper changes in how consumers are choosing to dine.
April 2026 marked another month of year-over-year (YoY) visit growth for fast casual, with traffic rising 1.9% compared to April 2025. The consistency of that trend – visible in the chart below – speaks to the ongoing strength of the segment’s value perception as consumer sentiment declines and energy costs spike – putting pressure on household budgets. Consumers continue to weigh quality and experience against price, and fast casual – sitting between the affordability of QSR and the elevated cost of full-service – keeps clearing that bar. This could also explain the slight decline in QSR visits – for the second consecutive month – which may be reflecting rising prices that are narrowing the gap with fast casual and prompting some consumers to trade up.
Full service restaurants, meanwhile, saw their visit gap improve following March's 4.8% YoY decline – which may indicate that March's dramatic decrease may have been due to calendar shifts rather than to a sharp drop in demand. (March 2025 had five Saturdays compared to March 2026's four, which likely hurt full-service's total monthly traffic last month.) The return to modest dips suggests that, while underlying demand is facing broader macro headwinds, the pressure is less severe than last month’s outsized drop implied.
Beyond visit counts, April 2026 brought a slight shift in visit duration. Mid-length visits (10 to 30 minutes) grew their share YoY across all three segments, while the share of very short visits (under 10 minutes) declined for QSR and fast-casual and the share of longer visits (30+ minutes) fell for all three categories.
For QSR, the 10 to 30 minute visit bucket grew from 30.2% of visits in April 2025 to 31.2% in April 2026 – a meaningful shift for a segment where speed is a core value. This could reflect consumers skipping the drive-thru, and opting to park and dine-in instead, as fuel costs make idling a less economical proposition.
Fast casual visits revealed a similar pattern, as mid-length visits in the segment edged up from 34.2% in April 2025 to 35.4% in April 2026. Given that fast casual is already designed for a more relaxed dining pace than QSR, the uptick in mid-length visits might reflect a combination of factors – consumers leaning into the sit-down experience, and slightly longer wait times as the segment's sustained popularity pressures throughput.
Meanwhile, full-service visits saw a decline in the share of longer visits (30+ minutes) while the share of both short and mid-length visits increased – though longer visits still lead in overall share. Lighter checks, smaller parties, or a more purposeful approach to dining occasions could all be contributing factors.
Fast casual's sustained outperformance and the industry-wide shift toward mid-length visits both point in the same direction: consumers are engaging more selectively with dining, and the segments and brands that offer a compelling experience are pulling ahead.
For more dining insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
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In April 2026, Home Depot's five-day return-to-office mandate took effect for corporate employees – the latest addition to a growing list of major employers requiring more in-person presence. What does the latest data reveal about the pace of recovery on the ground?
Nationwide office visits landed 29.1% below April 2019 levels in April 2026 – a slight improvement compared to April 2025. While this marks continued progress, the pace of recovery was more measured than in March, which saw a 4.2 percentage point gain when controlling for the number of working days. (April 2025 and April 2026 had the same number of working days, offering a clean basis for comparison).
Alongside the growing wave of mandates, a survey from MyPerfectResume early this year found that just 7% of employees would quit outright over a mandatory RTO policy in 2026 – down from 51% in January 2025. The shift reflects a labor market that has continued to soften, leaving workers with less leverage to push back on policies they might have resisted just a year ago.
On the other side of the ledger, rising gas prices introduced a meaningful counterweight in April, with the national average surpassing $4.00 per gallon for the first time since 2022. For daily commuters already reassessing the cost of in-office work, a jump of more than $1.00 per gallon in a single month is a significant headwind – and likely one factor behind the slower pace of gains.
Looking across eleven major office markets, nearly all posted modest YoY visit growth, led again by West Coast hubs Los Angeles and San Francisco. Once viewed as a persistent laggard, San Francisco’s AI-powered recovery has helped it avoid the bottom spot for several months running. And as the city’s narrative continues shifting from “doom loop” to “boom loop,” it is likely to keep gaining ground in the months ahead.
Denver, on the other hand, finished last in April across both measures – down 45.3% versus April 2019 and 1.1% from a year ago. With one of the most remote-friendly labor markets in the country and downtown office vacancy still hovering around 38%, the city is increasingly leaning on alternative strategies such as office-to-residential conversions to revive its urban core. Still, prime and Class A buildings remain a bright spot, as employers look to draw workers back with higher-quality spaces and perks rather than mandates alone – and as these efforts gain traction, Denver could begin to narrow the gap.
April’s data reinforces a familiar theme: The return to office remains non-linear, marked by steady but uneven progress. Mandates continue to accumulate and employer leverage has strengthened compared to last year, helping push attendance higher. But rising gas prices are adding friction – and the gap between the nation’s strongest and weakest office markets remains wide.
For more data-driven RTO reports follow Placer.ai/anchor.
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Location intelligence for Walmart and Target highlights two distinct storylines in the superstore space – one defined by sustained momentum, and the other by the early stages of a rebound.
Over the past several months, Walmart has recorded consistent year-over-year (YoY) visit growth, with same-store visits closely tracking overall traffic – suggesting that gains are being driven primarily by existing locations rather than new store openings. This trend aligns with the company’s previously reported transaction growth, reinforcing the strength of underlying demand and serving as a positive signal as Q2 2026 progresses.
Target, on the other hand, entered 2026 under pressure, as visits trailed prior-year levels in both November and December 2025 – partly reflecting continued softness in discretionary categories, which represent a significant portion of its business.
January 2026, however, appeared to mark the beginning of a notable shift, with both overall visits and same-store visits stabilizing. The months that followed brought a meaningful traffic rebound, indicating that February’s positive sales trends may have continued, and new CEO Michael Fiddelke’s turnaround strategy may be bearing fruit. These improvements are particularly noteworthy in light of ongoing weakness in consumer sentiment and the impact of energy price hikes.
An analysis of visits to both brands by day of week adds further context to their recent performance. At Walmart and Target alike, weekday visits rose sharply YoY in Q1 2026 – marking a clear improvement for both retailers – while weekend visits remained essentially flat YoY.
For Target, this stabilization in weekend visits is notable, as prior declines had weighed on overall performance. This matters because weekends tend to capture more discretionary browsing and higher-margin categories that are central to Target’s model.
At the same time, with non-essential spending under pressure, growth anchored in steady weekday demand – reflecting routine, need-based shopping trips – suggests that both brands are reinforcing their roles as essential retail destinations. A measured, but steady, start to 2026.
AI-powered location intelligence indicates that Walmart continues to benefit from steady, need-based demand, while Target appears to be regaining traction after a softer period. Whether Target can build on this early momentum and translate it into sustained growth may be one of the more closely watched dynamics in the sector in the months ahead.
For updates, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
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We're living through one of the most consequential technology shifts of our lifetimes. Generative AI is reshaping how people analyze information, make decisions, and do their work at a pace that would have seemed implausible only a few years ago. For industries like ours, where professionals rely on data to make high-stakes decisions about the physical world, the opportunity is especially exciting. Insights that once took weeks can now surface in minutes. Analytical workflows that once required specialized training can become accessible to anyone.
But that opportunity comes with real responsibility. The same capabilities that make GenAI so powerful also introduce risks such as bias, accuracy, privacy, and misuse - and those risks compound when the underlying technology is moving faster than the norms and regulations around it. The companies building with AI today are, in many ways, writing the operating rules in real time. How we choose to do that matters.
At Placer, we want to be clear about how we choose to do it. Placer doesn't build its own large language models (LLMs). Instead, we use well-established, trusted models from leading providers - the same foundation models that power the most widely adopted AI tools in the enterprise today. That's a deliberate choice. Our value to customers comes from the depth and quality of our data and the analytical expertise built around it, not from reinventing general-purpose AI infrastructure.
But not building the models ourselves doesn't let us off the hook for how we use them. If anything, it raises the bar. When we embed GenAI into our platform, whether as an analytical assistant, an automated summary, or a future agent that helps professionals move faster through their workflows, our customers trust us with the outcome. They're trusting us to pick the right models, apply the right guardrails, protect their data, and be transparent about what the technology is and isn't doing.
That's why we're publishing our Responsible AI Principles today. They're clear, concise, and they reflect how we actually operate.
The four Responsible AI principles address the issues we believe matter most to the professionals who rely on Placer every day:
Fairness and bias mitigation. AI systems can reflect and amplify existing biases in their training data. Our core defense is something we've been doing since long before GenAI: continuously validating our models, monitoring our AI practices and de-biasing outputs where appropriate.
Transparency and accountability. When we use GenAI in customer-facing features, we say so. We build feedback mechanisms into the product and treat that feedback as a real input to how the system evolves.
Privacy by design. Our AI tools are built to identify patterns about places and brands, not individuals. The same strict privacy measures that govern the rest of the Placer platform apply to every new GenAI feature we ship.
Security and safety. We are responsible custodians of our customers' data and are committed to safeguarding its integrity using industry leading standards.
We've also published a clear statement on how Placer's GenAI capabilities may be used and what restrictions we apply. These aren't new restrictions; they extend the responsible-use commitments that have always governed how our data can be used.
We're excited about the era of GenAI and about the value these new capabilities will create for our customers. The AI principles we're publishing are part of a broader effort across the company that’s grounded in a simple idea: trust isn't something we claim once and move on from. It's something we earn in every feature we ship.
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April 2025 set a high bar for movie theater performance, with A Minecraft Movie (April 4) and Sinners (April 18) driving significant spikes in foot traffic. Against this strong comparison, year-over-year (YoY) theater visits trended negative through much of April 2026. This followed a stronger March 2026, when releases like Scream 7 and Project Hail Mary – and easier comparisons – helped sustain significant YoY traffic gains
While the highly anticipated The Devil Wears Prada 2 (released May 1) did not generate a meaningful YoY uplift – given the difficult April 2025 comparison – it appears to have helped stabilize visitation trends, halting the declines seen in prior weeks.
Overall, the data reinforces that theater traffic remains highly blockbuster-driven, with consumers still willing to return to theaters when content feels like a must-see experience. With a slate of major releases ahead – including Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu in late May and Toy Story 5 in mid-June – the sector is likely to see renewed spikes in visitation tied to tentpole premieres.
For more data-driven consumer insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
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April data indicates positive momentum for the mall sector, with year-over-year (YoY) traffic increases across all three formats analyzed – indoor malls, open-air shopping centers, and outlet malls. This performance is particularly notable given the strong April baseline last year, when traffic rose between 3.7% and 4.3% across formats compared to April 2024.
Open-air centers came out on top, extending a trend in place since December 2025, with visits rising 3.5% YoY. This marks a return to the top growth position after ceding the lead to indoor malls for much of 2025. Indoor malls followed with a 2.2% increase, while outlet malls lagged behind, posting a modest 0.5% YoY gain in April 2025 – potentially reflecting greater sensitivity to elevated gas prices in recent weeks.
At the same time, the average visit duration declined YoY, with all formats experiencing a shift toward shorter visits (under 30 minutes) and a corresponding drop in longer visits (45+ minutes).
This divergence between rising traffic and shorter dwell times suggests that a growing share of consumers are engaging in more mission-driven trips – visiting with a specific purpose in mind rather than for extended browsing. As a result, malls may be seeing more targeted, efficiency-oriented behavior that could concentrate spend within fewer stores per trip.
Still, this shift does not signal a wholesale move away from malls as destinations: across formats, over 40% of visits continue to last more than 60 minutes, indicating that a significant segment of consumers remains engaged in longer, more experiential visits even as quick trips become more prevalent.
April’s data suggests that malls are evolving to meet a wider range of consumer needs. The combination of rising traffic and varied visit lengths suggests that malls are successfully functioning both as convenient, mission-driven retail hubs and as destinations for longer, experiential outings. This dual role may ultimately prove to be a strength, enabling operators and tenants to capture multiple trip types and occasions. If sustained, these trends position the sector for continued resilience, with opportunities to further optimize tenant mix, merchandising strategies, and on-site experiences to align with increasingly dynamic consumer behavior.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Stadiums and arenas – and the communities they call home – have a stake in cultivating engaged team fanbases eager to participate in live events. And venues and teams can employ a variety of strategies to strengthen their connection with fans and draw crowds to the stands.
In this report, we leverage location analytics and audience segmentation to uncover some of the ways that sports franchises and venues are driving engagement – attracting visitors from farther away and appealing to fans more likely to splurge on stadium fare. How does the signing of a star athlete impact arena visitor profiles? What happens to stadium visitation trends when a team’s performance improves dramatically? And how can teams and venues tailor their offerings to more effectively cater to visitor preferences?
We dove into the data to find out.
In sports, the signing of a star athlete can have a ripple effect across the organization, hometown, and league. In addition to driving up overall attendance at games, star power can impact everything from visit frequency to audience profile – and the buying power of stadium attendees.
Lionel Messi’s move to Inter Miami CF after decades of European play brought a foot traffic boost to Chase Stadium (formerly DRV PNK Stadium). But it also shifted the demographics of stadium visitors and increased the distance they traveled to attend a game.
At Inter Miami’s 2022 and 2023 home openers without Messi (he joined the team mid-season in 2023), only 6.4% and 5.3% of visitors to Chase Stadium came from over 250 miles away. But for the 2024 home opener with Messi on the squad, 31.3% of stadium visitors traveled more than 250 miles to attend.
The demographics of visitors at the home opener also changed with Messi on the team. Trade area data combined with the Spatial.ai: PersonaLive dataset reveals that the 2024 home opener received a smaller share of households in the “Near-Urban Diverse Families” (11.2%) and “Young Urban Singles” (7.2%) segments than the two previous years. Meanwhile, shares of “Sunset Boomers” (13.0%) and “Ultra Wealthy Families” (20.1%) increased, indicating that Messi brought an older and more affluent demographic of visitors to the stadium compared to previous years. Messi’s arrival has generated increased revenue for Inter Miami CF, Major League Soccer, and Apple TV+, which has exclusive streaming rights for MLS games. And an influx of affluent out-of-town visitors also has the potential to drive positive outcomes for tourism and employment in the Miami area.
Caitlin Clark’s WNBA debut was another star-powered game changer – this time for women’s basketball. After dazzling the sports world during her college basketball career, Caitlin Clark was drafted first overall to the Indiana Fever before the 2024 WNBA season. The superstar’s arrival has had a staggering economic impact on the city of Indianapolis and the Fever franchise, highlighting the benefit of a top athlete within the local community. However, Clark’s stardom also had a far-reaching impact on the league as a whole, adding tremendous value to the WNBA. Trade area analysis reveals that several WNBA arenas saw an uptick in visitor affluence when hosting the Fever with Clark in the lineup – likely driven in part by the elevated ticket prices associated with her appearances.
When the Minnesota Lynx hosted the Fever on July 14th, 2024, for example, the median HHI of Target Center’s captured market shot up to just over $93K/year, well above the median HHIs for the games immediately before and after that event. (A venue’s captured market refers to the census block groups (CBGs) from which it draws its visitors, weighted to reflect the share of visits from each one – and thus reflects the profile of the venue’s visitor base.) Similarly, the Fever’s away game against the Connecticut Sun on May 14th, 2024 at Mohegan Sun Arena drove a higher audience median HHI ($103.6K/year) than either of the Sun’s next two home games.
Having a superstar on the roster can drive positive outcomes locally and league-wide – but overall team success is the ultimate goal for any franchise. So it may come as no surprise that stadiums and arenas can drive engagement when their home teams perform well on the field or court. And teams that reverse their fortunes often spark even greater excitement, boosting visitor loyalty, visit duration, and other key metrics.
The Baltimore Orioles had one of the worst records in baseball just a few years ago. But since 2022, the team has flipped the script – stringing together winning seasons and postseason berths. And location intelligence shows that as the team finds success, fans are becoming more engaged with their hometown stadium.
During the 2019 regular season, one of the worst for the club in recent history, stadium attendance suffered, with only 8.3% of visitors to Oriole Park at Camden Yards visiting the stadium at least three times. But during the 2024 regular season, Oriole Park’s share of repeat visitors (those who visited at least three times) was almost double 2019 levels (16.3%) – consistent with a sharp increase in sales of multi-game ticket packages.
In addition to attending games more often, visitors to Oriole Park also appear to be spending more time at the ballpark. During the 2019 regular season, visitors spent an average of 150 minutes at the stadium, but in 2024, the average time at the park increased to 178 minutes – potentially boosting ancillary spending and in-stadium advertising exposure. The increased dwell time of visitors is particularly noteworthy when considering that MLB’s rule changes have significantly shortened average game time.
The more engaged fandom engendered by team success not only impacts stadium visitor behavior, but also has the potential to drive revenue. The Orioles added 20 new corporate sponsors before the 2024 season, likely due to the attention garnered by the well-performing club.
The NFL’s Detroit Lions provide another example of team success that has driven visitor engagement. As the franchise has improved its record in recent years, the trade area size of its stadium – Ford Field – has also increased, indicating elevated attendance from fans living further away.
The Lions finished the regular season with losing records from 2019 to 2021, but finished over .500 in 2022 (9-8), 2023 (12-5), and 2024 (15-2). And with the team’s increasing wins each consecutive season, the size of its stadium's trade area has also increased steadily – reaching 81.3% above 2019 levels in 2024.
This underscores just how much team success matters to fans, who may be more inclined to travel longer distances if they believe their team is likely to win. Ultimately, broader fan engagement across a wider trade area also increases a team’s growth potential beyond in-stadium attendance – driving merchandise sales, increasing viewership, and benefitting both the team and the league as a whole.
While stadium attendance and visitor behavior is often correlated to the performance of the sports teams that play in the arena, sporting venues can also drive fan engagement in ways that aren’t solely tied to team success or big-name athletes. By adapting their concessions and venue operations to visitor preferences, stadiums and arenas can better serve their audiences and strengthen their community presence.
Consumers have been feeling the pinch of rising food costs for quite some time, but at least one NBA team has responded to make concessions at the game more affordable for fans. In December 2024, the Phoenix Suns announced a $2 value menu for all home games at Footprint Center – delivering steep discounts on hot dogs, water, soda, and snacks.
Location analytics suggest that since the value menu launch, more fans who would have otherwise waited until after leaving the venue to grab a bite are now enjoying food and drinks inside the arena. Analysis of five Suns home games just before the value menu launch – between November 26th and December 15th, 2024 – reveals that between 7.0% and 9.3% of stadium visitors visited a dining establishment after leaving the arena. But following the value menu launch before the December 19th, 2024 home game, post-game dining decreased to under 6.0% through the end of the year.
Suns owner Mat Ishbia’s announcement of the new menu called out the need for affordable food options for families at Suns games. As the season progresses, the new menu may drive a larger share of family households to Suns games, which could provide opportunities for advertisers and other stadium partners.
Consumers in Washington – and especially Seattle – are known for their affinity for plant-based diets and environmentally-friendly lifestyles. And that goes for local football fans as well: Audience segmentation provided by the AGS: Behavior & Attitudes dataset combined with trade area data reveals that during September to December 2024, households within Lumen Field’s potential visitor base were 36% more likely to be “Environmentally Conscious Buyers” and “Environmental Contributors” and 39% more likely to be “Vegans” compared to the nationwide average. By contrast, across all NFL stadiums, potential visiting households were 2%, 1%, and 3% less likely, respectively, to belong to these segments.
And Lumen Field has been actively catering to these consumer preferences. The stadium, which has been experimenting with plant-based culinary options for quite some time, was recently recognized as one of the most vegan-friendly stadiums in the NFL. And in December 2024, Lumen became the second stadium in the league to achieve TRUE precertification for its efforts to become a zero-waste venue.
By remaining aligned with its visitor base – including both football fans and people that visit the stadium for other events – Lumen Field encourages visitors to feel at home at their local stadium. And fans may be more connected to their team knowing the club shares their values and respects their lifestyle.
Stadiums and arenas can leverage a variety of strategies to engage visitors in attendance as well as wider audiences. Signing a star athlete, putting together a winning club, or adapting to local preferences are just some of the ways that sports franchises and athletic venues can find success.
Starbucks. Amazon. Barclays. AT&T. UPS. These are just some of the major corporations that have made waves in recent months with return-to-office (RTO) mandates requiring employees to show up in person more often – some of them five days a week.
But how are crackdowns like these taking shape on the ground? Is the office recovery still underway, or has it run its course? And how are evolving in-office work patterns impacting commuting hubs and dining trends? This white paper dives into the data to assess the state of office recovery in 2024 – and to explore what lies ahead for the sector in 2025.
In 2024, office foot traffic continued its slow upward climb, with visits to the Placer.ai Office Index down just 34.3% compared to 2019. (In other words, visits to the Placer.ai Office Index were 65.7% of their pre-COVID levels). And zooming in on year-over-year (YoY) trends reveals that office visits grew by 10.0% in 2024 compared to 2023 – showing that employee (and manager) pushback notwithstanding, the RTO is still very much taking place.
Indeed, diving into quarterly office visit fluctuations since Q4 2019 shows that office visits have been on a slow, steady upward trajectory since Q2 2020, following – at least since 2022 – a fairly consistent seasonal pattern. In Q1, Q2, and Q3 of each year, office visit levels increased steadily before dipping in holiday-heavy Q4 – only to recover to an even higher start-of-year baseline in the following Q1.
Between Q1 and Q3 2022, for example, the post pandemic office visit gap (compared to a Q4 2019 baseline) narrowed from 63.1% to 47.5%. It then widened temporarily in Q4 before reaching a new low – 41.4% – in Q1 2023. The same pattern repeated itself in both 2023 and 2024. So even though Q4 2024 saw a predictable visit decline, the first quarter of Q1 2025 may well set a new RTO record – especially given the slew of strict RTO mandates set to take effect in Q1 at companies like AT&T and Amazon.
Despite the ongoing recovery, the TGIF work week – which sees remote-capable employees concentrating office visits midweek and working remotely on Fridays – remains more firmly entrenched than ever.
In 2024, just 12.3% of office visits took place on Fridays – less than in 2022 (13.3%) and on par with 2023 (12.4%). Though Fridays were always popular vacation days – after all, why not take a long weekend if you can – this shift represents a significant departure from the pre-COVID norm, which saw Fridays accounting for 17.3% of weekday office visits.
Unsurprisingly, Tuesdays and Wednesdays remained the busiest in-office days of the week, followed by Thursdays. And Mondays saw a slight resurgence in visit share – up to 17.9% from 16.9% in 2023 – suggesting that as the RTO progresses, Manic Mondays are once again on the agenda.
Indeed, a closer look at year-over-five-year (Yo5Y) visit trends throughout the work week shows that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 2024 office foot traffic was down just 24.3% and 26.9%, respectively, compared to 2019 levels. The Thursday visit gap registered at 30.3%, while the Monday gap came in at 40.5%.
But on Fridays, offices were less than half as busy as they were in 2019 – with foot traffic down a substantial 53.2% compared to 2019.
Before COVID, long commutes on crowded subways, trains, and buses were a mainstay of the nine-to-five grind. But the rise of remote and hybrid work put a dent in rush hour traffic – leading to a substantial slowdown in the utilization of public transportation. As the office recovery continues to pick up steam, examining foot traffic patterns at major ground transportation commuting hubs, such as Penn Station in New York or Union Station in Washington, D.C., offers additional insight into the state of RTO.
Rush hour, for one thing – especially in the mornings – isn’t quite what it used to be. In 2024, overall visits to ground transportation hubs were down 25.0% compared to 2019. But during morning rush hour – weekdays between 6:00 AM and 9:00 AM – visits were down between 44.6% and 53.0%, with Fridays (53.0%) and Mondays (49.7%) seeing the steepest drops. Even as people return to the office, it seems, many may be coming in later – leaning into their biological clocks and getting more sleep. And with today’s office-goers less likely to be suburban commuters than in the past (see below), hubs like Penn Station aren’t as bustling first thing in the morning as they were pre-pandemic.
Evening rush hour, meanwhile, has been quicker to bounce back, with 2024 visit gaps ranging from 36.4% on Fridays to 30.0% on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Office-goers likely form a smaller part of the late afternoon and evening rush hour crowd, which may include more travelers heading to a variety of places. And commuters going to work later in the day – including “coffee badgers” – may still be apt to head home between four and seven.
The drop in early-morning public transportation traffic may also be due to a shift in the geographical distribution of would-be commuters. Data from Placer.ai’s RTO dashboard shows that visits originating from areas closer to office locations have recovered faster than visits from farther away – indicating that people living closer to work are more likely to be back at their desks.
And analyzing the captured markets of major ground transportation hubs shows that the share of households from “Principal Urban Centers” (the most densely populated neighborhoods of the largest cities) rose substantially over the past five years. At the same time, the share of households from the “Suburban Periphery” dropped from 39.1% in 2019 to 32.7% in 2024. (A location’s captured market refers to the census block groups (CBGs) from which it draws its visitors, weighted to reflect the share of visits from each one – and thus reflects the profile of the location’s visitor base.)
This shift in the profile of public transportation consumers may explain the relatively slow recovery of morning transportation visits: City dwellers , who seem to be coming into the office more frequently than suburbanites, may not need to get as early a start to make it in on time.
While the RTO debate is often framed around employer and worker interests, what happens in the office doesn’t stay in the office. Office attendance levels leave their mark on everything from local real estate markets to nationwide relocation patterns. And industries from apparel to dining have undergone significant shifts in the face of evolving work routines.
Within the dining space, for example, fast-casual chains have always been workplace favorites. Offering quick, healthy, and inexpensive lunch options, these restaurants appeal to busy office workers seeking to fuel up during a long day at their desks.
Traditionally, the category has drawn a significant share of its traffic from workplaces. And after dropping during COVID, the share of visits to leading fast-casual brands coming from workplaces is once again on the rise.
In 2019, for example, 17.3% of visits to Chipotle came directly from workplaces, a share that fell to just 11.6% in 2022. But each year since, the share has increased – reaching 16.0% in 2024. Similar patterns have emerged at other segment leaders, including Jersey Mike’s Subs, Panda Express, and Five Guys. So as people increasingly go back to the office, they are also returning to their favorite lunch spots.
For many Americans, coffee is an integral part of the working day. So it may come as no surprise that shifting work routines are also reflected in visit patterns at leading coffee chains.
In 2019, 27.5% of visits to Dunkin’ and 20.1% of visits to Starbucks were immediately followed by a workplace visit, as many employees grabbed a cup of Joe on the way to work or popped out of the office for a midday coffee break. In the wake of COVID, this share dropped for both coffee leaders. But since 2022, it has been steadily rebounding – another sign of how the RTO is shaping consumer behavior beyond the office.
Five years after the pandemic upended work routines and supercharged the soft pants revolution, the office recovery story is still being written. Workplace attendance is still on the rise, and restaurants and coffee chains are in the process of reclaiming their roles as office mainstays. Still, office visit data and foot traffic patterns at commuting hubs show that the TGIF work week is holding firm – and that people aren’t coming in as early or from as far away as they used to. As new office mandates take effect in 2025, the office recovery and its ripple effects will remain a story to watch.
