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In a challenging macroeconomic environment, full-service restaurants (FSRs) face mounting pressure to attract and retain diners. Recent foot traffic data underscores a growing divide among top FSR players:
Brinker International (EAT), parent to Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy, continued its winning streak with double-digit YoY visit growth in Q2.
Texas Roadhouse’s portfolio (TXRH), featuring its flagship steakhouse, Bubba-33, and Jaggers, saw moderate (+4.1%) YoY overall visit gains and slightly increased same-store visits, reflecting steady performance at existing sites amid ongoing expansion.
Bloomin’ Brands (Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill, and Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar) experienced YoY foot traffic declines. While Bloomin’ narrowed its YoY visit gap in Q2, it remains squeezed between the aggressive value messaging of chains like Chili’s and the focused execution of competitors like Texas Roadhouse.
What lies behind Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse’s standout success in 2025?
Chili’s visits began to surge in Q2 2024 – the result of a turnaround plan executed by CEO Kevin Hochman after he took the helm in 2022. By reducing and refining the menu, boosting efficiency, and focusing on craveable yet affordable dishes, Chili’s cut costs and funneled the savings into compelling promotions. The company also worked to make its brand more fun and buzzworthy, setting the stage for viral TikTok moments amplified by well-coordinated influencer campaigns. Meanwhile, menu innovations – most notably the Big Smash Burger, added to the company’s “3 for Me” value menu in April 2024 – drove a lasting traffic boost that persisted into 2025 as the chain continued updating its value meal.
Texas Roadhouse, by contrast, has pursued steady expansion over the past several years. Like Chili’s, it relies on a focused, core menu to maintain quality and efficiency, but unlike Chili’s it rarely changes up its offerings, sticking instead to consistently excelling at what it does best. The steakhouse chain also famously forgoes nationwide advertising in favor of local engagement and a strong reputation for everyday value. Although per-location visit growth at Texas Roadhouse softened slightly in early 2025 – perhaps reflecting heightened consumer attention to limited-time offers and special promotions – the steakhouse continues to grow its footprint while limiting cannibalization.
Despite following different paths to growth, Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse have both made focused menus a core tenet of their strategies. And with menu simplification proving effective in today’s crowded market, it is no surprise that Bloomin’ Brands has recently outlined its own plans to cut costs and boost consistency by trimming menus – particularly at Outback Steakhouse.
Ultimately, foot traffic translates into market share, and both Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse have grown their portions of the overall FSR visit pie. While Texas Roadhouse has steadily augmented its reach over several years, Chili’s saw a sharp surge in H1 2025, propelled by its aggressive value-driven initiatives.
The varied performances of Brinker, Texas Roadhouse, and Bloomin’ Brands underscore the critical need for a clear, disciplined strategy in today’s competitive casual dining sector. And Chili's and Texas Roadhouse’s successes demonstrate how menu simplicity and operational efficiency can fuel distinct avenues to success.
As these brands head into the second half of 2025, several questions loom large for executives and investors:
The coming months will test whether Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse can maintain their winning formulas – and whether Bloomin’ Brands can course-correct through targeted menu reductions and promotional recalibrations.
For more data-driven dining insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
Health and wellness continue to be a major priority for most Americans, and the fitness industry continues to reap the benefits. This segment has ample room for all kinds of gym-goers, from luxury athletic chains like Life Time to more accessible and affordable options like Planet Fitness. We took a look at visitation patterns to these two chains in Q2 2025 to understand their recent performance
Upscale gym chain Life Time has evolved into a wellness powerhouse over the years, offering its members access to fitness classes, luxury amenities, and even co-working and residential spaces.
Though the chain experienced impressive visit growth in 2024, YoY visits slowed slightly in 2025 – perhaps owing in part to the difficult comparison to a particularly strong 2024. Still, visit gaps were fairly minimal – Q2 2025 visits were just -0.6% lower than in Q2 2024, and average visits per location were just -1.5% lower year-over-year.
And while visits may have moderated somewhat in the first half of the year, Life Time seems confident about its market position, with several new locations in the pipeline for 2025 and 2026.
While Life Time caters to gym-goers looking for a luxury wellness experience, Planet Fitness offers easily accessible, judgment-free fitness zones that welcomes all kinds of gym-goers. This model, characterized by its low monthly fees and basic amenities, aims to appeal to a broad consumer base.
And foot traffic trends suggest that this model is not just working, it’s thriving: YoY visits were elevated by 10.1% in Q2 2025, and average visits per location grew by 6.2% in the same period. This growth comes on the heels of its elevated visits throughout H2 2024 – a promising sign for the chain as it begins a major expansion push.
A closer look at visit data highlights that visit frequency at Life Time is consistently higher than at Planet Fitness. Throughout 2025, visitors to Planet Fitness visited an average of 4.1 to 4.4 times a month, while visitors to Life Time visit an average of 5.7 to 6.2 times a month.
This reflects the two brands’ different models: Life Time aims to be a true one-stop-shop for wellness, combining co-working spaces and residential living with its fitness offerings, elements that encourage members to visit more frequently. Meanwhile, Planet Fitness’s focus on affordability and a straightforward gym-going experience attracts budget-conscious gym-goers whose visits, while slightly less frequent, align with their demand for simple, convenient fitness.
Life Time and Planet Fitness occupy two very different ends of the fitness and wellness spectrum – and both are proving that there’s room for variety in the gym segment.
How might the second half of the year look for these two chains?
Visit Placer.ai/anchor for the latest data-driven fitness insights.
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First Watch, Denny's, IHOP, and Applebee's improved their visitation metrics in Q2 2025 relative to Q1 2025.
First Watch increased its total visits by 13.7% year-over-year, fueled both by its ongoing expansion and by a notable 4.1% increase in average visits per location, signaling significant room for continued growth.
In contrast to First Watch's expansion, Denny's has been closing stores. Its smaller footprint led to a 4.9% dip in overall visits, but its remaining restaurants became significantly busier, with average visits per location up 5.1% year-over-year – suggesting that loyal customers are consolidating at its remaining stores
Meanwhile, Dine brands IHOP and Applebee's also improved their visitation trends. IHOP narrowed its overall visits and average visits per location declines while Applebee's turned its traffic dips into gains in Q2, with overall visits up 2.7% YoY and average visits per venue up 5.5% – perhaps thanks to Dine's marketing efforts around the brand.
Overall, the strong Q2 performance of these four chains highlights the resilience of the value-driven casual dining sector – and may indicate that consumers may be 'trading down' from more expensive restaurants while still seeking a sit-down experience.
While First Watch caters to a wealthier clientele (with median HHI of $88.7K compared to the nationwide baseline of $79.6K), it's the chains’ serving of lower-income areas – Applebee's, Denny's, and IHOP – that attract a higher share of frequent monthly visitors. This suggests that loyalty is not dictated by disposable income; instead, brands that offer reliability and affordability can become a go-to option for their customers, driving high visit frequency even in times of macroeconomic uncertainty.
The strong Q2 performance of these chains highlights the casual dining sector's resilience and reveals two distinct paths to success in today's economy. While First Watch thrives on aggressive expansion into higher-income areas, brands like Denny's and Applebee's prove that cultivating deep loyalty among a value-conscious base through affordability and optimization is an equally powerful and sustainable strategy.
For more data-driven dining insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
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CAVA started the year off strong with double-digit traffic increases between January and April 2025, but growth slowed down slightly towards the end of H1. Still, the chain capped off the quarter with a 8.7% YoY overall boost in visits in Q2 2025 while visits per location held essentially steady at -1.0% – suggesting that CAVA's expansion is not cannibalizing traffic from its existing venues.
Sweetgreen experienced similar traffic patterns, with overall visits up 8.6% YoY in Q2 2025 and a visit gap of 3.1% – a somewhat larger dip than CAVA's visits per location decline, though still a manageable figure for a brand in a heavy expansion phase.
While CAVA and sweetgreen share a lot of similarities, analyzing the YoY change in Q2 2025 visits by DMA highlights their different expansion philosophies. CAVA's strategy seems focused on market depth, where entry into new markets is part of a broader strategy of establishing and strengthening regional clusters. In contrast, sweetgreen's approach seems to prioritize nationwide breadth – a strategy underscored by its plans to enter three distinct geographically separate markets in 2025.
The map reflects the impact of these distinct strategies: In Q2 2025, CAVA's YoY visit growth is mostly concentrated in distinct geographic clusters, while sweetgreen's gains are more geographically dispersed across the country's major metropolitan areas.
The Q2 2025 visit growth of CAVA and sweetgreen demonstrates that multiple viable paths exist for scaling a premium fast-casual brand. While both approaches are currently driving significant overall growth, the crucial test ahead will be which strategy can better maintain store-level profitability and brand loyalty as they continue to scale.
For more data-driven dining insights, visit placer.ai/anchor
Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have had to work hard to stay competitive in 2025, contending with inflationary pressures, cautious consumer spending, and a wave of value-focused dining alternatives.
So with the year now more than halfway through, we analyzed location analytics for leading QSR players Yum! Brands, RBI, and Wendy’s to see which chains defied expectations in Q2 2025 – and how they managed to remain ahead of the curve.
Rising costs and growing competition have eroded fast food’s once-formidable value advantage. Convenience and grocery stores now offer more substantial dining options, giving budget-conscious consumers more reasons to look beyond traditional QSRs. Meanwhile, fast-casual brands and even some full-service restaurants (like Chili’s) have introduced more elevated dining experiences at price points close to fast-food levels.
Despite these challenges, Yum! Brands and RBI have remained resilient. Yum! Brands posted modest year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth in Q2 2025 – while RBI, whose domestic footprint contracted somewhat, saw a narrowing YoY visit gap. But both chains maintained average visits per location near last year’s levels, underscoring their ability to navigate a persistently tough environment.
What’s behind RBI’s narrowing visit gap?
Popeyes emerged as a bright spot in Q2 2025, with overall foot traffic rising by 0.6% despite a reduced domestic store count – and average visits per location climbing 2.2%. This marks a notable improvement from Q1, when traffic was down 3.2%. The chicken chain’s blend of innovation and value – from new chicken wing flavors in late 2024 and early 2025 to limited-time offers (LTOs) like the $6 Big Box – appears to be winning over diners.
Burger King, RBI’s most-visited chain, also contributed to the company’s improved traffic. The brand narrowed its YoY visit gap from 3.4% in Q1 to 2.1% in Q2, thanks in part to expanded value deals and timely tie-ins such as a How to Train Your Dragon-themed meal. Meanwhile, average visits per location at Burger King nearly matched 2024 levels, with the gap shrinking from 2.0% in Q1 to 0.2% in Q2.
Yum! Brands’ primary growth engine has been Taco Bell – by far the company’s largest U.S. banner. By frequently introducing new menu items while keeping an eye on affordability – through offerings like the expanded Luxe Cravings Box – Taco Bell has sustained its reputation as a top-value treat. And building on a strong Q1, the Mexican QSR giant saw overall foot traffic climb by 2.6% YoY in Q2, with average visits per location growing by 1.5% YoY.
Elsewhere in Yum!’s portfolio, KFC and Pizza Hut posted YoY visit gaps in Q2. Still, the two brands’ average-visit-per-location gaps remained modest, indicating that consumer demand remains healthy at existing stores despite some closures.
Wendy’s is another QSR relying on value deals and menu expansions to weather the sector’s choppy waters. After two years of steady YoY same-store sales growth in the U.S., Wendy’s recorded a 2.8% comp sales decline in Q1 2025, mirrored by a 3.4% dip in average visits per location.
But Wendy’s isn’t sitting still. In March, it updated its Frostys menu, followed in April by a crowd-pleasing Cajun Crunch Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Alongside its existing value menu, Wendy’s is also leveraging special promotions this summer – from free Frostys on July 20th (National Ice Cream Day) and free fries every “Fryday” to an upcoming “Meal of Misfortune” tied to the latest season of Netflix’s Wednesday. And though visits in Q2 2025 still trailed 2024 levels, Wendy’s consistently narrowing visit gap points to a potentially brighter outlook as the year progresses.
To succeed in 2025, QSRs must excel at both menu innovation and value – no easy feat – giving today’s savvy and budget-conscious consumers a compelling reason to spend. And though 2025 promises more headwinds, chains that effectively strike this balance may be well-positioned to thrive.
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Kohl’s emergence as a hot new meme stock wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card for 2025. The retailer has grappled with declining sales and ongoing leadership challenges, driving a steep drop in its share price over the past several years. But beyond the internet buzz, is there any real reason for optimism about Kohl’s outlook?
Despite recent setbacks, Kohl’s surprised investors in Q1 2025 with a smaller-than-expected 3.9% year-over-year (YoY) drop in comparable sales – fueling speculation that a turnaround might be in the works. The company’s foot traffic gap also narrowed to just 2.7% YoY in Q1, a notable improvement from the 6.0% gap in Q4 2024. In Q2 2025, too, Kohl’s visit-per-location gap remained relatively modest at 3.1%. But monthly YoY data showed substantial volatility, with June experiencing a sharp decline while March through May visits per location held close to last year’s levels.
All in all, Kohl’s clearly has a long way to go to reclaim its former glory – and it’s too soon to tell whether a comeback is indeed in the cards. But with the right strategy, the data does point to some underlying strength that may help the company regain its footing – meme stock or not.
For more data-driven retail analyses, follow Placer.ai/anchor.
The past few years have provided the tourism sector with a multitude of headwinds, from pandemic-induced lockdowns to persistent inflation and a rise in extreme weather events. But despite these challenges, people are more excited than ever to travel – more than half of respondents to a recent survey are planning on increasing their travel budgets in the coming months.
And while revenge travel to overseas destinations is still very much alive and well, the often high costs associated with traveling abroad are shaping the way people choose to travel. Domestic travel and tourism are seeing significant growth as more affordable alternatives.
This white paper takes a closer look at two of the most popular domestic tourism destinations in the country – New York City and Los Angeles. Over the past year, both cities have continued to be leading tourism hotspots, offering a wealth of attractions for visitors. What does tourism to these two cities look like in 2024, and what has changed since before the pandemic? How have inflation and rising airfare prices affected the demographics and psychographics of visitors to these major hubs?
Analyzing the distribution of domestic tourists across CBSAs nationwide from May 2023 to April 2024 reveals New York and Los Angeles to be two of the nation’s most popular destinations. (Tourists include overnight visitors staying in a given CBSA for up to 31 days).
The New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA metro area drew the largest share of domestic tourists of any CBSA during the analyzed period (2.7%), followed closely by the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA CBSA (2.5%). Other domestic tourism hotspots included Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL (tied for second place with 2.5% of visitors), Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (1.9%), Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV (1.8%), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL (1.8%), and Chicago-Naperville, Elgin, IL-IN-WI (1.6%).
The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. Empire City. Whatever it’s called, New York City remains one of the most well-known tourist destinations in the world. And for many Americans, New York is the perfect place for an extended weekend getaway – or for a multi-day excursion to see the sights.
But where do these NYC-bound vacationers come from? Diving into the data on the origin of visitors making medium-length trips to New York City (three to seven nights) reveals that increasingly, these domestic tourists are coming from nearby metro areas.
Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, for example, the number of tourists visiting New York City from the Philadelphia metro area increased by 19.2%.
The number of tourists coming from the Boston and Washington, D.C metro areas, and from the New York CBSA itself (New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA) also increased over the same period.
Meanwhile, further-away CBSAs like San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL fed fewer tourists to NYC in 2023-2024 than they did pre-pandemic. It seems that residents of these more distant metro areas are opting for vacation destinations closer to home to avoid the high costs of air travel.
Diving even deeper into the characteristics of visitors taking medium-length trips to New York City reveals another demographic shift: Tourists staying between three and seven nights in the Big Apple are skewing younger.
Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, the share of visitors to New York City from areas with median ages under 30 grew from 2.1% to 4.5%. Meanwhile, the share of visitors from areas with median ages between 31 and 40 increased from 34.3% to 37.7%.
The impact of this trend is already being felt in the Big Apple, with The Broadway League reporting that the average age of audiences to its shows during the 2022- 2023 season was the youngest it had been in 20 seasons.
The shift towards younger tourists can also be seen when examining the psychographic makeup of visitors to popular attractions in New York City. Analyzing the captured markets of major NYC landmarks with data from Spatial.ai’s PersonaLive dataset reveals an increase in households belonging to the “Educated Urbanites” segment between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024.
These well-educated, young singles are increasingly visiting iconic NYC venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History, and the Statue of Liberty. This shift highlights the growing popularity of these attractions among young, educated singles, reflecting a broader trend of increased domestic tourism among this demographic.
New York City’s tourism sector is adapting to meet the changing needs of travelers, fueled increasingly by younger visitors who may be unable to take a costly international vacation. How have travel patterns to Los Angeles changed in response to increasing travel costs?
While New York City is the East Coast’s tourism hotspot, Los Angeles takes center stage on the West Coast. And as overseas travel has become increasingly out of reach for Americans with less discretionary income, the share of domestic tourists originating from areas with lower HHIs has risen.
Before the pandemic, 57.6% of visitors to LA came from affluent areas with median household incomes (HHIs) of over $90K/year. But by 2023-2024, this share decreased to 50.7%. Over the same period, the share of visitors from areas with median HHIs between $41K and $60K increased from 9.7% to 12.5%, while the share of visitors from areas with HHIs between $61K and $90K rose from 32.1% to 35.8%.
Diving into the psychographic makeup of visitors to popular Los Angeles attractions – Universal Studios Hollywood, Disneyland California, the Santa Monica Pier, and Griffith Observatory – also reflects the above-mentioned shift in HHI. The captured markets of these attractions had higher shares of middle-income households belonging to the “Family Union” psychographic segment in 2023-2024 than in 2018-2019.
Experian: Mosaic defines this segment as “middle income, middle-aged families living in homes supported by solid blue-collar occupations.” Pre-pandemic, 16.0% of visitors to Universal Studios Hollywood came from trade areas with high shares of “Family Union” households. This number jumped to 18.8% over the past year. A similar trend occurred at Disneyland, Santa Monica Pier, and Griffith Observatory.
And like in New York City, growing numbers of visitors to Los Angeles appear to be coming from nearby areas. Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, the share of in-state visitors to major Los Angeles attractions increased substantially – as people likely sought to cut costs by keeping things local.
Pre-pandemic, for example, 68.9% of visitors to Universal Studios Hollywood came from within California – a share that increased to 72.0% over the past year. Similarly, 59.7% of Griffith Observatory visitors in 2018-2019 came from within the state – and by 2023-2024, that number grew to 64.7%.
Even when times are tight, people love to travel – and New York and Los Angeles are two of their favorite destinations. With prices for airfare, hotels, and dining out increasing across the board, younger and more price-conscious households are adapting, choosing to visit nearby cities and enjoy attractions closer to home. And as the tourism industry continues its recovery, understanding emerging visitation trends can help stakeholders meet travelers where they are.
The positive retail momentum observed in Q1 2024 continued into Q2 – as stabilizing prices and a strong job market fostered cautious optimism among consumers. Year-over-year (YoY) retail foot traffic remained elevated throughout the quarter, with June in particular seeing significant weekly visit boosts ranging from 4.7% to 8.5%.
The robustness of the retail sector in Q2 was also highlighted by positive visit growth during the quarter’s special calendar occasions, including Mother’s Day (the week of May 6th) and Memorial Day (the week of May 27th). And though consumer spending may moderate as the year wears on, retail’s strong Q2 showing offers plenty of room for optimism ahead of back-to-school sales and other summer milestones.
On a quarterly basis, overall retail visits rose 4.2% in Q2. And diving into specific categories shows that value continued to reign supreme, with discount and dollar stores seeing the most robust YoY visit growth (11.2%) of any analyzed category.
Other essential goods purveyors, such as grocery store chains (7.6%) and superstores (4.6%), also outperformed the overall retail baseline. And fitness – a category deemed essential by many health-conscious consumers – outpaced overall retail with a substantial 6.0% YoY foot traffic increase.
The decidedly more discretionary home improvement industry performed less well than overall retail in Q2 – but in another sign of consumer resilience, it too experienced a YoY visit uptick. And overall restaurant foot traffic increased 2.6% YoY.
Discount and dollar stores enjoyed a strong Q2 2024, maintaining YoY visit growth above 10.0% for six out of the quarter’s 13 weeks. Only during the week of April 1st did the category see a temporary decline, likely the result of an Easter calendar shift. (The week of April 1st 2024 is being compared to the week of April 3rd, 2023, which included the run-up to Easter)
Some of this growth can be attributed to the continued expansion of segment leaders like Dollar General. But the category has also been bolstered by the emphasis consumers continue to place on value in the face of still-high prices and economic uncertainty.
Dollar General, which has been expanding both its store count and its grocery offerings, saw YoY visits increase between 9.1% and 15.9% throughout the quarter. Affordable-indulgence-oriented Five Below, which has also been adding locations at a brisk clip, saw YoY visits increase between 4.9% and 18.8%.
And though Dollar Tree has taken steps to rightsize its Family Dollar brand, the company’s eponymous banner – which caters to middle-income consumers in suburban areas – continued to grow both its store count and its visits in Q2.
Grocery store chains also performed well in Q2 2024 – experiencing strongly positive foot traffic growth throughout the quarter. Though the sector continues to face its share of challenges, stabilizing food-at-home prices and improvements in employee retention and supply chain management have helped propel the industry forward.
Diving into the performance of specific chains shows that within the grocery segment, too, price was paramount in Q2 2024 – with limited-assortment value grocery stores like Aldi and Trader Joe’s leading the way.
Traditional chains H-E-B and Food Lion (owned by Ahold Delhaize) – both of which are known for relatively low prices – outperformed the wider grocery sector with respective YoY foot traffic boosts of 11.4% and 8.7%. But ShopRite, Safeway (owned by Albertsons), Kroger, and Albertsons also drew more visits in Q2 2024 than in the equivalent period of last year.
Fitness has proven to be relatively inflation-proof in recent years – thriving even in the face of reduced discretionary spending and consumer cutbacks. Indeed, rising prices may have actually helped boost gym attendance, as people sought to squeeze the most value out of their monthly fees and replace pricy outings with already-paid-for gym excursions.
And despite lapping a remarkably strong 2023, visits to gyms nationwide remained elevated YoY in Q2 2024.
Diving into the data for some of the nation’s leading gyms shows that today’s fitness market has plenty of room at the top. Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Life Time Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, and LA Fitness all experienced YoY visit growth in Q2 2024 – reflecting consumers’ enduring interest in all things wellness-related.
But it was EōS Fitness and Crunch Fitness – two value gyms that have been pursuing aggressive expansion strategies – that really hit it out of the park, with respective YoY foot traffic increases of 23.4% and 21.4%.
The week of April 1st saw a decline in YoY visits to superstores – likely attributable to the Easter calendar shift noted above. But the category quickly rallied, and with back-to-school shopping and major superstore sales events coming up this July, the category appears poised to enjoy continued success throughout the summer.
Within the superstore category, wholesale clubs continued to stand out – with Costco Wholesale, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club enjoying YoY foot traffic growth ranging from 12.0% to 7.4%. But Target and Walmart also impressed with 4.6% and 4.0% YoY visit increases.
Inflation, elevated interest rates, and a sluggish real estate market have created a perfect storm for the home improvement industry, with spending on renovations in decline. The accelerated return to office has likely also taken its toll on the category, as people spend more time outside the home and have less availability to immerse themselves in DIY projects.
But despite these challenges, weekly YoY foot traffic to home improvement and furnishing chains remained elevated throughout much of the Q2 – with June and April seeing mostly positive YoY visit growth, and May hovering just below 2023 levels. This (modest) visit growth may be driven by consumers loading up on supplies for necessary home repairs, or by shoppers seeking materials for smaller projects. And given the importance of Q2 for the home improvement sector, this largely positive snapshot may offer some promise of good things to come.
Some chains within the home improvement category continued to perform especially well in Q2 2024 – with rapidly expanding, budget-oriented Harbor Freight Tools leading the pack. But Ace Hardware, Menards, The Home Depot, and Lowe’s also saw foot traffic increases in Q2, showcasing the category’s resilience in the face of headwinds.
Restaurants – including full-service restaurants (FSR), quick-service restaurants (QSR), fast-casual chains, and coffee chains – lagged behind grocery stores and other essential goods retailers in Q2 2024, as price-sensitive consumers prioritized needs over wants and ate at home more often.
Still, YoY restaurant foot traffic remained up throughout most of the quarter. And impressively, the sector saw a YoY visit uptick during the week of Mother’s Day (the week of May 6th, 2024, compared to the week of May 8th, 2023) – an important milestone for FSR.
The restaurant industry’s YoY visit growth was felt across segments – though fast-casual and coffee chains experienced the biggest visit boosts. Like in Q1 2024, fast-casual restaurants hit the sweet spot between indulgence and affordability, outpacing QSR in the wake of fast food price hikes. And building on the positive YoY trendline that began to emerge last quarter, full-service restaurants finished Q2 2024 with a 1.4% YoY visit uptick.
Chain expansion was the name of the restaurant game in Q2 2024, with several chains that have been growing their footprints outperforming segment averages – including CAVA, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Ziggi’s Coffee, California-based Philz Coffee, Raising Cane’s, Whataburger, and First Watch. Chili’s Grill and Bar also outpaced the full-service category average, aided by the revamping of its “3 for Me” menu.
Retailers and restaurants in Q2 2024 continued to face plenty of challenges, from inflation to rising labor costs and volatile consumer confidence. But foot traffic trends across industries – including both essential goods purveyors like grocery stores and more discretionary categories like home improvement and restaurants – suggest plenty of room for cautious optimism as 2024 wears on.
Return-to-office (RTO) trends have been closely watched over the past few years, with relevant stakeholders trying to puzzle out the impact remote and hybrid work have had on business operations and worker performance. And while visits to office buildings, overall, remain below pre-pandemic levels, office recovery varies from city to city – reflecting the complex and nuanced nature of regional economic trends, workforce preferences, and industry-specific needs.
This white paper harnesses location analytics to explore office recovery in the country’s second-largest economy – Los Angeles. The first part of the report is based on an analysis of foot traffic data from Placer.ai’s Los Angeles Office Index – an index comprising 100 office buildings in LA (including several in the greater metro area). The second part of the report broadens the lens to analyze visits by local employees to points of interest (POIs) corresponding to four major LA-area office districts: Century City, Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City. The white paper examines the impact that return-to-work mandates have had on visits to office buildings, discovers which demographic groups are driving the RTO, and explores the connection between commute time and return-to-office rates.
The return to office in Los Angeles has consistently lagged behind other major cities, underperforming nationwide recovery levels since the pandemic ground in-office work to a virtual halt. Still, the city’s office buildings are seeing a steady increase in visits, with foot traffic tending to spike at the beginning of each year. This indicates that even though office visits in LA are still below national averages, they are on a steady growth trajectory – a promising sign for stakeholders in the city.
A closer examination of Los Angeles office buildings also shows that despite the overall lag, some top-performing buildings in the LA metro area are defying the odds. Visits to the 20 local office buildings with the narrowest Q2 2024 post-COVID visit gaps were down just 8.7% in June 2024 compared to January 2019 – significantly outperforming the nationwide average.
So while overall office recovery in the city is still behind nationwide trends, these top-performing buildings indicate an optimistic outlook for the city’s office spaces.
Diving into the demographics of visitors to LA’s top-performing office buildings reveals an important insight: these buildings are attracting younger workers. This cohort has shown a stronger preference for in-person work compared to their older colleagues.
Analyzing the buildings’ captured markets with psychographics from AGS: Panorama reveals that these buildings are attracting visitors from areas with larger shares of "Emerging Leaders" and "Young Coastal Technocrats" than the broader metro area.
"Emerging Leaders'' – upper-middle-class professionals in early stages of their careers – make up 20.3% of households in the trade areas feeding visits to these top-performing buildings, compared to 14.9% in the broader LA CBSA. Similarly, "Young Coastal Technocrats," young and highly educated professionals in tech and professional services, account for 14.7% of households driving visits to the top-performing buildings, compared to only 12.1% in the broader area.
The trend suggests that companies in these high-performing office buildings employ many early-career professionals eager to accelerate their careers and work in-person with colleagues and mentors. This is a positive sign for the future of the office market in the LA metro area, indicating that it is attractive to key demographic groups that are likely to drive future growth and innovation.
Over the past few years, the debate regarding return-to-office mandates has been a heated one. Will employees follow return-to-office requirements? Can companies enforce the return to office after offering remote and hybrid work options? Recent location analytics data suggests that, at least in the Los Angeles metro area, some return-to-office mandates have been effective.
Three major tech companies – Activision Blizzard, TikTok, and SNAP Inc. – recently made their return-to-office policies stricter. Activision mandated a full return to the office in January 2024. TikTok has also intensified its return-to-office policy while seeking to expand its office presence in the greater Los Angeles area. And SNAP Inc. required employees to return to the office earlier this year as a condition of continued employment.
Visitation patterns at each of these companies' respective headquarters suggest that their policies have directly impacted visit frequency. Since the beginning of the year, the share of repeat office visits (defined as two or more visits per week) has increased for all three locations. Activision saw its share of repeat office visits grow from 52.1% in H1 2023 to 61.4% in the same period of 2024. TikTok’s repeat visits grew from 49.5% to 61.0%, and SNAP’s repeat visits increased from 36.6% to 42.8%.
These numbers highlight how return-to-office policies can lead to noticeable changes in office visit patterns and offer a blueprint to other businesses looking to foster a stronger in-office workforce.
Los Angeles is the second-largest metro area in the country, with several distinct business districts across its sprawling landscape. And a closer look at four major office hubs in the greater LA area – Century City, Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City – highlights how the office recovery can vary, not just by city or demographic, but on a neighborhood level.
Weekday visits by local employees to all four analyzed business districts have rebounded significantly since 2020 – though each area has followed its own particular trajectory.
Culver City, home to major businesses including Sony Pictures and Disney Digital Network, saw the least pronounced drop in employee visits during the early days of the pandemic. And in Q2 2024, weekday visits by local workers were down just 18.4% compared to Q1 2019.
Century City, on the other hand, saw the most marked drop in local employee foot traffic as the pandemic set in. But the district’s recovery trajectory has also been the most dramatic – with a Q2 2024 visit gap of just 28.5%, smaller than Downtown LA’s 29.7% visit gap. Perhaps capitalizing on this momentum, Century City is expanding its business district with the addition of a major new office building, set to be completed in 2026 and serve as the headquarters for Creative Artists Agency. Santa Monica, for its part, finished off Q2 2024 with a 23.3% visit gap.
Century City stands out within the Los Angeles metropolitan area for its dramatic decline and subsequent resurgence in local employee foot traffic. And looking at another metric of office recovery – employee commute distance – further underscores the district’s remarkable comeback.
The share of employees commuting to Century City from three to seven miles away has nearly returned to pre-COVID levels – suggesting a normalization of commuting patterns by local workers living in the area. In H1 2019, 33.5% of workers in Century City commuted between 3 and 7 miles to work; in 2022, that number had dropped to 29.8%. But by 2024, the share of visitors making that commute had grown to 32.5% – much closer to pre-COVID numbers.
Similarly, the region’s trade area size, which had contracted significantly in the wake of the pandemic, bounced back significantly in 2024. This serves as another indication of Century City’s rebound, cementing Century City’s status as a key business hub within the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Five years after the upheaval caused by the pandemic, office spaces are still changing. Although the Los Angeles area has taken longer to recover than other major cities, analyzing local visitation data shows significant potential for the city’s business areas. With young employees leading the return-to-office charge, the city is poised to keep driving its strong economy and adjust to an evolving office environment.
