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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.
New York City is one of the world’s leading commercial centers – and Manhattan, home to some of the nation's most prominent corporations, is at its epicenter. Manhattan’s substantial in-office workforce has helped make New York a post-pandemic office recovery leader, outpacing most other major U.S. hubs. And the plethora of healthcare, service, and other on-site workers that keep the island humming along also contribute to its thriving employment landscape.
Using the latest location analytics, this report examines the shifting dynamics of the many on-site workers employed in Manhattan and the up-and-coming Hudson Yards neighborhood. Where does today’s Manhattan workforce come from? How often do on-site employees visit Hudson Yards? And how has the share of young professionals across Manhattan’s different districts shifted since the pandemic?
Read on to find out.
The rise in work-from-home (WFH) trends during the pandemic and the persistence of hybrid work have changed the face of commuting in Manhattan.
In Q2 2019, nearly 60% of employee visits to Manhattan originated off the island. But in Q2 2021, that share fell to just 43.9% – likely due to many commuters avoiding public transportation and practicing social distancing during COVID.
Since Q2 2022, however, the share of employee visits to Manhattan from outside the borough has rebounded – steadily approaching, but not yet reaching, pre-pandemic levels. By Q2 2024, 54.7% of employee visits to Manhattan originated from elsewhere – likely a reflection of the Big Apple’s accelerated RTO that is drawing in-office workers back into the city.
Unsurprisingly, some nearby boroughs – including Queens and the Bronx – have seen their share of Manhattan worker visits bounce back to what they were in 2019, while further-away areas of New York and New Jersey continue to lag behind. But Q2 2024 also saw an increase in the share of Manhattan workers commuting from other states – both compared to 2023 and compared to 2019 – perhaps reflecting the rise of super commuting.
Commuting into Manhattan is on the rise – but how often are employees making the trip? Diving into the data for employees based in Hudson Yards – Manhattan’s newest retail, office, and residential hub, which was officially opened to the public in March 2019 – reveals that the local workforce favors fewer in-person work days than in the past.
In August 2019, before the pandemic, 60.2% of Hudson Yards-based employees visited the neighborhood at least fifteen times. But by August 2021, the neighborhood’s share of near-full-time on-site workers had begun to drop – and it has declined ever since. In August 2024, only 22.6% of local workers visited the neighborhood 15+ times throughout the month. Meanwhile, the share of Hudson Yards-based employees making an appearance between five and nine times during the month emerged as the most common visit frequency by August 2022 – and has continued to increase since. In August 2024, 25.0% of employees visited the neighborhood less than five times a month, 32.5% visited between five and nine times, and 19.2% visited between 10 and 14 times.
Like other workers throughout Manhattan, Hudson Yards employees seem to have fully embraced the new hybrid normal – coming into the office between one and four times a week.
But not all employment centers in the Hudson Yards neighborhood see the same patterns of on-site work. Some of the newest office buildings in the area appear to attract employees more frequently and from further away than other properties.
Of the Hudson Yards properties analyzed, Two Manhattan West, which was completed this year, attracted the largest share of frequent, long-distance commuters in August 2024 (15.3%) – defined as employees visiting 10+ times per month from at least 30 miles away. And The Spiral, which opened last year, drew the second-largest share of such on-site workers (12.3%).
Employees in these skyscrapers may prioritize in-person work – or have been encouraged by their employers to return to the office – more than their counterparts in other Hudson Yards buildings. Employees may also choose to come in more frequently to enjoy these properties’ newer and more advanced amenities. And service and shift workers at these properties may also be coming in more frequently to support the buildings’ elevated occupancy.
Diving deeper into the segmentation of on-site employees in the Hudson Yards district provides further insight into this unique on-site workforce.
Analysis of POIs corresponding to several commercial and office hubs in the borough reveals that between August 2019 and August 2024, Hudson Yards’ captured market had the fastest-growing share of employees belonging to STI: Landscape's “Apprentices” segment, which encompasses young, highly-paid professionals in urban settings.
Companies looking to attract young talent have already noticed that these young professionals are receptive to Hudson Yards’ vibrant atmosphere and collaborative spaces, and describe this as a key factor in their choice to lease local offices.
Manhattan is a bastion of commerce, and its strong on-site workforce has helped lead the nation’s post-pandemic office recovery. But the dynamics of the many Manhattan-based workers continues to shift. And as new commercial and residential hubs emerge on the island, workplace trends and the characteristics of employees are almost certain to evolve with them.
The restaurant space has experienced its fair share of challenges in recent years – from pandemic-related closures to rising labor and ingredient costs. Despite these hurdles, the category is holding its own, with total 2024 spending projected to reach $1.1 trillion by the end of the year.
And an analysis of year-over-year (YoY) visitation trends to restaurants nationwide shows that consumers are frequenting dining establishments in growing numbers – despite food-away-from-home prices that remain stubbornly high.
Overall, monthly visits to restaurants were up nearly every month this year compared to the equivalent periods of 2023. Only in January, when inclement weather kept many consumers at home, did restaurants see a significant YoY drop. Throughout the rest of the analyzed period, YoY visits either held steady or grew – showing that Americans are finding room in their budgets to treat themselves to tasty, hassle-free meals.
Still, costs remain elevated and dining preferences have shifted, with consumers prioritizing value and convenience – and restaurants across segments are looking for ways to meet these changing needs. This white paper dives into the data to explore the trends impacting quick-service restaurants (QSR), full-service restaurants (FSR), and fast-casual dining venues – and strategies all three categories are using to stay ahead of the pack.
Overall, the dining sector has performed well in 2024, but a closer look at specific segments within the industry shows that fast-casual restaurants are outperforming both QSR and FSR chains.
Between January and August 2024, visits to fast-casual establishments were up 3.3% YoY, while QSR visits grew by just 0.7%, and FSR visits fell by 0.3% YoY. As eating out becomes more expensive, consumers are gravitating toward dining options that offer better perceived value without compromising on quality. Fast-casual chains, which balance affordability with higher-quality ingredients and experiences, have increasingly become the go-to choice for value-conscious diners.
Fast-casual restaurants also tend to attract a higher-income demographic. Between January and August 2024, fast-casual restaurants drew visitors from Census Block Groups (CBGs) with a weighted median household income of $78.2K – higher than the nationwide median of $76.1K. (The CBGs feeding visits to these restaurants, weighted to reflect the share of visits from each CBG, are collectively referred to as their captured market).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, quick-service restaurants drew visitors from much less affluent areas. But interestingly, despite their pricier offerings, full-service restaurants also drew visitors from CBGs with a median HHI below the nationwide baseline. While fast-casual restaurants likely attract office-goers and other routine diners that can afford to eat out on a more regular basis, FSR chains may serve as special occasion destinations for those with more moderate means.
Though QSR, FSR, and fast-casual spots all seek to provide strong value propositions, dining chains across segments have been forced to raise prices over the past year to offset rising food and labor costs. This next section takes a look at several chains that have succeeded in raising prices without sacrificing visit growth – to explore some of the strategies that have enabled them to thrive.
The fast-casual restaurant space attracts diners that are on the wealthier side – but some establishments cater to even higher earners. One chain of note is NYC-based burger chain Shake Shack, which features a captured market median HHI of $94.3K. In comparison, the typical fast-casual diner comes from areas with a median HHI of $78.2K.
Shake Shack emphasizes high-quality ingredients and prices its offerings accordingly. The chain, which has been expanding its footprint, strategically places its locations in affluent, upscale, and high-traffic neighborhoods – driving foot traffic that consistently surpasses other fast-casual chains. And this elevated foot traffic has continued to impress, even as Shake Shack has raised its prices by 2.5% over the past year.
Steakhouse chain Texas Roadhouse has enjoyed a positive few years, weathering the pandemic with aplomb before moving into an expansion phase. And this year, the chain ranked in the top five for service, food quality, and overall experience by the 2024 Datassential Top 500 Restaurant Chain.
Like Shake Shack, Texas Roadhouse has raised its prices over the past year – three times – while maintaining impressive visit metrics. Between January and August 2024, foot traffic to the steakhouse grew by 9.7% YoY, outpacing visits to the overall FSR segment by wide margins.
This foot traffic growth is fueled not only by expansion but also by the chain's ability to draw traffic during quieter dayparts like weekday afternoons, while at the same time capitalizing on high-traffic times like weekends. Some 27.7% of weekday visits to Texas Roadhouse take place between 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM – compared to just 18.9% for the broader FSR segment – thanks to the chain’s happy hour offerings early dining specials. And 43.3% of visits to the popular steakhouse take place on Saturdays and Sundays, when many diners are increasingly choosing to splurge on restaurant meals, compared to 38.4% for the wider category.
Though rising costs have been on everybody’s minds, summer 2024 may be best remembered as the summer of value – with many quick-service restaurants seeking to counter higher prices by embracing Limited-Time Offers (LTOs). These LTOs offered diners the opportunity to save at the register and get more bang for their buck – while boosting visits at QSR chains across the country.
Limited time offers such as discounted meals and combo offers can encourage frequent visits, and Hardee’s $5.99 "Original Bag" combo, launched in August 2024, did just that. The combo allowed diners to mix and match popular items like the Double Cheeseburger and Hand-Breaded Chicken Tender Wraps, offering both variety and affordability. And visits to the chain during the month of August 2024 were 4.9% higher than Hardee’s year-to-date (YTD) monthly visit average.
August’s LTO also drove up Hardee’s already-impressive loyalty rates. Between May and July 2024, 40.1% to 43.4% of visits came from customers who visited Hardee’s at least three times during the month, likely encouraged by Hardee’s top-ranking loyalty program. But in August, Hardee’s share of loyal visits jumped to 51.5%, highlighting just how receptive many diners are to eating out – as long as they feel they are getting their money’s worth.
McDonald’s launched its own limited-time offer in late June 2024, aimed at providing value to budget-conscious consumers. And the LTO – McDonald’s foray into this summer’s QSR value wars – was such a resounding success that the fast-food leader decided to extend the deal into December.
McDonald’s LTO drove foot traffic to restaurants nationwide. But a closer look at the chain’s regional captured markets shows that the offer resonated particularly well with “Young Urban Singles” – a segment group defined by Spatial.ai's PersonaLive dataset as young singles beginning their careers in trade jobs. McDonald's locations in states where the captured market shares of this demographic surpassed statewide averages by wider margins saw bigger visit boosts in July 2024 – and the correlation was a strong one.
For example, the share of “Young Urban Singles” in McDonald’s Massachusetts captured market was 56.0% higher than the Massachusetts statewide baseline – and the chain saw a 10.6% visit boost in July 2024, compared to the chain's statewide H1 2024 monthly average. But in Florida, where McDonald’s captured markets were over-indexed for “Young Urban Singles” by just 13% compared to the statewide average, foot traffic jumped in July 2024 by a relatively modest 7.3%.
These young, price-conscious consumers, who are receptive to spending their discretionary income on dining out, are not the sole driver of McDonald’s LTO foot traffic success. Still, the promotion’s outsize performance in areas where McDonald’s attracts higher-than-average shares of Young Urban Singles shows that the offering was well-tailored to meet the particular needs and preferences of this key demographic.
While QSR, fast-casual, and FSR chains have largely boosted foot traffic through deals and specials, reputation is another powerful way to attract diners. Restaurants that earn a coveted Michelin Star often see a surge in visits, as was the case for Causa – a Peruvian dining destination in Washington, D.C. The restaurant received its first Michelin Star in November 2023, a major milestone for Chef Carlos Delgado.
The Michelin Star elevated the restaurant's profile, drawing in affluent diners who prioritize exclusivity and are less sensitive to price increases. Since the award, Causa saw its share of the "Power Elite" segment group in its captured market increase from 24.7% to 26.6%. Diners were also more willing to travel for the opportunity to partake in the Causa experience: In the six months following the award, some 40.3% of visitors to the restaurant came from more than ten miles away, compared to just 30.3% in the six months prior.
These data points highlight the power of a Michelin Star to increase a restaurant’s draw and attract more affluent audiences – allowing it to raise prices without losing its core clientele. Wealthier diners often seek unique culinary experiences, where price is less of a concern, making these establishments more resilient to inflation than more venues that serve more price-sensitive customers.
Dining preferences continue to evolve as restaurants adapt to a rapidly changing culinary landscape. From the rise in fast-casual dining to the benefits of limited-time offers, the analyzed restaurant categories are determining how to best reach their target audiences. By staying up-to-date with what people are eating, these restaurant categories can hope to continue bringing customers through the door.
The COVID-19 pandemic – and the subsequent shift to remote work – has fundamentally redefined where and how people live and work, creating new opportunities for smaller cities to thrive.
But where are relocators going in 2024 – and what are they looking for? This post dives into the data for several CBSAs with populations ranging from 500K to 2.5 million that have seen positive net domestic migration over the past several years – where population inflow outpaces outflow. Who is moving to these hubs, and what is drawing them?
The past few years have seen a shift in where people are moving. While major metropolitan areas like New York still attract newcomers, smaller cities, which offer a balance of affordability, livability, and career opportunities, are becoming attractive alternatives for those looking to relocate.
Between July 2020 and July 2024, for example, the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX CBSA, saw net domestic migration of 3.6% – not surprising, given the city of Austin’s ranking among U.S. News and World Report’s top places to live in 2024-5. Raleigh-Cary, NC, which also made the list, experienced net population inflow of 2.6%. And other metro areas, including Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR (3.3%), Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA (1.4%), Oklahoma City, OK (1.1%), and Madison, WI (0.6%) have seen more domestic relocators moving in than out over the past four years.
All of these CBSAs have also continued to see positive net migration over the past 12 months – highlighting their continued appeal into 2024.
What is driving domestic migration to these hubs? While these metropolitan areas span various regions of the country, they share a common characteristic: They all attract residents coming, on average, from CBSAs with younger and less affluent populations.
Between July 2020 and July 2024, for example, relocators to high-income Raleigh, NC – where the median household income (HHI) stands at $84K – tended to hail from CBSAs with a significantly lower weighted median HHI ($66.9K). Similarly, those moving to Austin, TX – where the median HHI is $85.4K – tended to come from regions with a median HHI of $69.9K. This pattern suggests that these cities offer newcomers an aspirational leap in both career and financial prospects.
Moreover, most of these CBSAs are drawing residents with a younger weighted median age than that of their existing residents, reinforcing their appeal as destinations for those still establishing and growing their careers. Des Moines and Oklahoma City, in particular, saw the largest gaps between the median age of newcomers and that of the existing population.
Career opportunities and affordable housing are major drivers of migration, and data from Niche’s Neighborhood Grades suggests that these CBSAs attract newcomers due to their strong performance in both areas. All of the analyzed CBSAs had better "Jobs" and "Housing" grades compared to the regions from which people migrated. For example, Austin, Texas received the highest "Jobs" rating with an A-, while most new arrivals came from areas where the "Jobs" grade was a B.
While the other analyzed CBSAs showed smaller improvements in job ratings, the combination of improvements in both “Jobs” and “Housing” make them appealing destinations for those seeking better economic opportunities and affordability.
Young professionals may be more open than ever to living in smaller metro areas, offering opportunities for cities like Austin and Raleigh to thrive. And the demographic analysis of newcomers to these CBSAs underscores their appeal to individuals seeking job opportunities and upward mobility.
Will these CBSAs continue to attract newcomers and cement their status as vibrant, opportunity-rich hubs for young professionals? And how will this new mix of population impact these growing markets?
Visit Placer.ai to keep up with the latest data-driven civic news.
