.svg)
Amazon recently announced that Prime Day 2026 will take place from June 23rd to 26th, marking an earlier-than-usual start to the summer promotional season. While Prime Day itself is primarily an online event, retailers with a significant brick-and-mortar presence often join the fray with competing sales, either during Amazon's event or in the lead-up to Fourth of July promotions. So what does retail foot traffic reveal about the state of the consumer heading into this key shopping period? We dove into the data to find out.
Despite ongoing headwinds, foot traffic to major retail chains for the first five months of the year stayed in positive territory relative to 2025, a notable showing given the macroeconomic uncertainty weighing on consumer sentiment. And even though the pace of growth has cooled since March – likely due in part to the sharp increase in gas prices – the direction never turned negative.
That consistency matters heading into Prime Day. Even as growth moderated through the spring, audiences continued to choose physical retail, suggesting that in-store visits are holding up rather than ceding ground to online channels. For retailers planning competing summer promotions, the steady baseline of positive year-over-year (YoY) traffic suggests that demand is present, and the opportunity lies in converting resilient visit volume into stronger spend during the promotional window.
Segmenting consumer traffic by driving distance shows that even the most acute headwind facing consumers right now – elevated gas prices – has done little to fundamentally alter shopping behavior. Even though longer-distance visits pulled back sharply in March with the onset of the gas price hike, the retreat proved short-lived – by April, every distance band had returned to positive growth, and the recovery held into May.
The quick rebound suggests that the March pullback in longer drives was largely temporary and did not mark a lasting shift toward online shopping. Consumers remain willing to make longer trips to stores – a healthy signal of shopping intent heading into the summer promotional season. And with gas prices now beginning to ease, the conditions look even more favorable for offline retailers as the promotional season approaches.
Zooming in on weekly visits to major retailers, however, reveals a more volatile, retailer-specific picture beneath the steady monthly averages.
The biggest distinction is between retailers entering the summer from a position of strength and those looking for a boost. Costco, Target, and (to a slightly lesser effect) Best Buy maintained year-over-year traffic gains throughout the spring – suggesting that, for these retailers, promotional events are more likely to amplify existing momentum than to create it.
Meanwhile, Walmart's traffic in recent weeks remained largely in line with last year, potentially reflecting continued pressure on its more value-oriented customer base – making the upcoming promotional events an important opportunity to reignite growth.
Home Depot and Lowe's fall somewhere in between. Both have shown signs of improvement after a prolonged slowdown, making the July 4th period an important test of whether that recovery can continue.
Consumer sentiment remains under pressure ahead of the early summer promotional events, but foot traffic data suggests that shoppers have not materially pulled back from physical stores. The resilience of longer-distance visits, combined with easing gas prices and generally positive traffic trends, points to a consumer who is becoming more selective rather than disengaged.
As retailers roll out competing promotions over the coming weeks, the key question will be where they choose to spend. Retailers already generating traffic momentum appear well positioned to capitalize on the season, while those facing softer visitation trends will be looking to promotions to reaccelerate growth.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai/anchor
Perhaps the nicest gift you can give a parent is a meal they don't have to cook – complete with cloth napkins, quality family time, and no dishes to clean afterward. That's why Mother's Day and Father's Day consistently deliver some of the biggest traffic surges of the year for full-service restaurants (FSRs).
But with fuel prices still elevated and consumers continuing to watch their spending, will families still splurge on dining out this Father's Day, or will some opt for lower-cost alternatives? Which restaurant chains stand to benefit the most from the holiday – and where might diners find a quieter table if they're hoping to avoid the crowds?
Mother's Day and Father's Day have long ranked among the restaurant industry's most important occasions – and Mother's Day this year was no exception.
On May 10th, 2026, visits to full-service restaurants surged 56.0% above the average Sunday, while rising 1.5% year over year compared to Mother's Day 2025. Diners also spent more time at restaurants, with average dwell time climbing 12.8% above a typical Sunday – suggesting longer celebrations and potentially larger checks.
Limited-service restaurants, meanwhile, saw visits dip slightly below their typical Sunday baseline – suggesting that consumers weren't trading down. Even amid economic uncertainty, families appeared willing to pay a premium for the experience of celebrating Mom with a sit-down meal. And with Mother's Day and Father's Day consistently ranking among the busiest days of the year for full-service restaurants, Mother's Day's strong performance bodes well for another successful Father's Day season.
Sunday Visits to Full-Service and Limited-Service Restaurants vs. the 12-Month Sunday Average
FSR Visits on Mother’s Day 2026 vs. Mother’s Day 2025
Mother’s Day vs. 12-Month Sunday Average (FSR)
Father’s Day vs. 12-Month Sunday Average (FSR)
On a typical Sunday, Texas Roadhouse is already the nation's most-visited full-service restaurant chain, capturing 7.9% of FSR visits. Chili's follows at 7.1%, while Olive Garden captures 6.5%.
Mother's Day reshuffles the leaderboard somewhat. Both Texas Roadhouse and Olive Garden gain meaningful share as families gather for celebratory meals, with Texas Roadhouse narrowly maintaining its lead. On Mother's Day 2026, Texas Roadhouse captured 9.2% of FSR visits, while Olive Garden followed closely at 8.8%.
Father's Day, however, is a very different story. Last year, Texas Roadhouse captured 9.4% of all full-service restaurant visits, while both Chili's (5.8%) and Olive Garden (5.7%) lagged far behind. Steak, it seems, is exceptionally dad-coded.
The flip side, of course, is that Father's Day may be one of the quieter times to enjoy a plate of unlimited breadsticks. As families flock to steakhouses to celebrate Dad, Olive Garden's share of visits falls well below its typical Sunday levels, making it a surprisingly uncrowded alternative for diners looking to avoid the holiday rush.
Parents, it turns out, are very good for the restaurant business. And if Mother's Day is any indication, June 21st is poised to provide another meaningful boost for the segment this year – giving operators another opportunity to capitalize on one of the category's most reliable traffic-driving occasions.
To keep on top of full-service dining trends, follow Placer.ai/anchor.
Like so many tourism hot spots, the pandemic brought visitation to Las Vegas to a near halt. Since then, the city has invested heavily in several new entertainment and sports venues – redefining Las Vegas for the post-pandemic era.
Yet standing in the way of Las Vegas’ next tourism boom is a growing challenge: affordability. For many travelers, a Vegas getaway has become increasingly out of reach, starting with the rising cost of staying on the iconic Strip. But the Strip itself may also hold the solution. AI-powered location intelligence suggests that activations designed to bring visitors directly to the corridor can boost foot traffic and attract mainstream audiences, reinforcing the Strip’s role as a central tourism engine.
After a brief foot traffic recovery in 2021 and 2022, visits to the Strip have remained below pre-pandemic levels. But since last year, the traffic decline appears to have tapered off– signaling a fresh baseline upon which visitation can build in the months and years ahead.
While the Strip's overall foot traffic has stabilized, major pop culture moments continue to drive meaningful spikes in visitation. Across a range of major events in 2026, out-of-market traffic jumped significantly above the same-day-of-week average.
The recent BTS ARIRANG World Tour was a tourism powerhouse, as the city rolled out weeks-long activations that drove traffic beyond the performance venue and onto the Strip itself. Similarly, the EDC World Party Parade, Bruno Mars Day, and the NASCAR Cup Series Hauler Parade all served as prime examples of broader venue-based events with an on-Strip element that ignited foot traffic – a formula that could be key to Las Vegas’s next chapter of tourism growth.
Diving into the demographics of Strip visitors highlights why boosting these event-based audiences could be critical.
Since the pre-pandemic period, the Strip's everyday visitor base has become notably more affluent – likely in part due to rising costs at hotels and resorts. In January through May of 2019, the median household income (HHI) of Strip visitors was $93.2K, compared to $101.1K during the same window in 2026.
However, on nearly all of the event days analyzed – with the exception of Bruno Mars Day – the Strip’s median HHI declined, in several cases pulling back toward 2019 levels. The EDC World Party Parade drew a median HHI of $94.7K, and on BTS concert days, the median HHI on the Strip ranged from $95.9K to $97.4K.
This shows that events driving traffic to the Strip are attracting audiences that more closely reflect the broad, mass-market appeal on which Las Vegas built its identity. By attracting a broader cross-section of visitors, widely accessible on-Strip events could help rekindle both the scale and diversity of visitation that characterized the city before the pandemic.
Las Vegas has invested heavily in new sports and entertainment venues. But as the city enters its next era of tourism, maximizing the role of the Strip could be key to driving visitation, engagement, and economic activity.
For more data-driven civic storylines, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
.avif)
Retail corridors – with their orientation towards apparel flagships, aspirational brands, and dining – have not been immune to the macroeconomic pressures weighing on discretionary retail. Declining consumer sentiment and tariff uncertainty appear to have impacted visits, which decreased year-over-year (YoY) most months since September 2025. And after a relatively resilient January and February, three of the steepest YoY visit gaps of the past year came in March, April, and May 2026, as rising fuel prices added another layer of financial pressure to household budgets.
Zooming in on monthly visit duration provides further evidence that economic headwinds – and pressure at the pump in particular – are having a meaningful impact on retail corridor traffic as the year progresses.
In January and February 2026, visits of less than 30 minutes decined compared to 2025 while visits of 30 minutes or more increased. This could reflect ongoing cost-of-living concerns – with consumers shopping more deliberately, checking prices, and taking longer to decide. In addition, consumers continue to prioritize elevated retail experiences and third-places, which can be cost-effective forms of recreation while encouraging longer dwell times. These factors likely helped fuel growth in extended visits while supporting overall traffic resilience for the first two months of the year.
But since March 2026, economic uncertainty has been compounded by rising fuel prices – perhaps making driving downtown less appealing to some. As a likely consequence, visits under 30 minutes dipped further, and visits of over 30 minutes flattened or declined outright, indicating that retail corridors are seeing an overall contraction of the discretionary-oriented activity they typically depend on.
To be sure, extended visits are still the norm. The average visit to retail corridors remained above two hours throughout the first five months of 2026, as they remain ideal destinations for discovery and leisure time. That strength, alongside incremental improvements in the longest visit buckets could signal an overall visit resurgence in the months ahead.
Retail corridor visitation trends show that consumer behavior can shift quickly in response to macroeconomic conditions. While early 2026 showed signs of more intentional, third-place style visits, the current fuel price spike appears to be putting a damper on mid-to-extended length trips. For retailers and civic stakeholders, resilience may depend on enhancing the consumer experience, in-store and along the corridor, giving consumers a reason to visit – and stay a while.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
%20(1).avif)
The broader restaurant industry continues to navigate a challenging economic environment, and rising gas prices have made value perception an even more important factor for consumers in determining where – and how – they choose to eat. With fuel costs remaining elevated throughout May 2026, we turned to the latest Placer.ai Dining Index data to assess how different dining segments performed and whether these emerging trends continued to gain momentum.
Dining traffic in May 2026 painted a mixed picture for the restaurant industry. Visits to full-service chains rose year-over-year (YoY) after two consecutive months of declines, likely benefiting from both Mother's Day and a favorable calendar shift. May 2026 included five Sundays compared to four in May 2025 – a subtle but meaningful tailwind for sit-down dining. The rebound suggests that even amid a challenging economic backdrop, consumers remain willing to spend on special occasions.
At the same time, pressure continued to build in the more value-oriented dining segments. QSR visit declines widened YoY, while fast-casual traffic growth slowed. Together, these trends provide additional evidence that persistent inflation and tighter household budgets are weighing on consumer behavior – particularly among the typically value-conscious audiences of QSR and fast casual chains.
Some of the weakness in QSR traffic – and even the slowdown in fast casual growth – may be tied to shifting consumer preferences around drive-thru usage and other convenience-based ordering channels
Location intelligence reveals that sub-10-minute visits to the two limited-service segments have underperformed compared to overall visits for several months. And in May 2026, short visits to QSR chains fell sharply YoY, while short visits to fast casual chains also decreased – their first such decline of 2026. The drop in visits under 10 minutes to both segments – a duration typically associated with drive-thru, but also pickup, and delivery orders – suggests that diners are not only looking to reduce fuel consumption but are increasingly prioritizing the experience of dining out over the convenience of picking up food to go.
With summer travel season around the corner and some modest relief at the pump beginning to emerge, drive-thru traffic, for its part, could shift into a higher gear in the weeks and months ahead.
May's dining data highlights a growing divide within the restaurant industry. While consumers continue to make room for special-occasion dining, value-oriented segments face mounting challenges as economic pressures persist. And with short-duration visits declining across both QSR and fast casual chains, elevated fuel costs may be reshaping how consumers approach their favorite chains.
For the latest dining insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
Following five consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales, Wendy's has appointed Robert D. “Bob” Wright – fresh off a successful turnaround at Potbelly – to steer the Dublin, Ohio-based chain back to growth. Can Wright work his magic once again? We dove into the data to understand what it will take to engineer another comeback.
Wendy's appointment of Bob Wright is rooted in his success leading Potbelly through a strong post-pandemic recovery. During Wright's tenure, Potbelly outperformed the broader fast-casual segment, while Wendy's has struggled to keep pace with the QSR industry's recovery – and Wendy's is likely betting that Wright can bring a similar turnaround playbook to Wendy's.
But whether Wright can replicate his success at Potbelly depends, in part, on what's driving Wendy's current challenges.
While macroeconomic headwinds have pressured value-oriented restaurant spending, they do not fully explain Wendy’s recent traffic struggles.
Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell all attract visitors from trade areas with similar median household incomes, yet Wendy’s has been the only chain to consistently post substantially weaker same-store visit performance over the past year.
Cross-visitation data further suggests that Wendy's challenges extend beyond macroeconomic headwinds. Since 2019, Wendy's customers have become increasingly likely to visit competing restaurant chains, indicating that the brand may be losing differentiation in an increasingly crowded market.
The encouraging news for Wendy's is that the traffic data points to several areas of underlying strength. If Wendy's can reconnect with consumer segments and dayparts where it has historically demonstrated traction, it may be able to reignite growth without fundamentally reinventing the brand.
On the demographic front, AI-based location analytics suggests that Wendy's may already possess an advantage that many restaurant chains are trying to build – a meaningful connection with younger consumers. Compared to the broader QSR industry, Wendy's captured market includes a larger share of younger, nonfamily households, indicating that the brand has established a stronger foothold among Gen Z and younger millennials than many of its peers.
So rather than trying to fundamentally reshape its customer base, Wendy's may have a greater opportunity to build on an audience that is already engaging with the brand. The success of initiatives such as the SpongeBob SquarePants collaboration demonstrates how culturally relevant campaigns can translate that engagement into traffic gains, giving Wendy's a potential blueprint for strengthening its relevance with younger consumers even further.
At the same time, the chain also overindexes on older consumers, positioning it to appeal to two demographic groups that many brands struggle to reach simultaneously. This positions the brand to appeal to two demographic groups that many restaurant concepts struggle to reach simultaneously and may create opportunities across multiple dining occasions. In particular, older consumers could represent a valuable audience for breakfast, a daypart where Wendy's has historically invested heavily but has recently begun to pull back.
Indeed, Wendy's has recently allowed some franchisees to reduce breakfast hours as demand has softened across the industry. Yet the data suggests that the brand's breakfast's challenges are not solely a function of weakening consumer demand for QSR breakfast – Wendy's morning traffic has fallen substantially faster than the category as a whole, pointing to a meaningful share loss.
That dynamic – especially given the brand's overindexing among older diners – raises questions about whether further retrenchment is the right long-term strategy. Even though breakfast accounts for a relatively small share of overall visits (less than 9% of Wendy's visits take place between 6 AM and 10 AM) abandoning the daypart risks accelerating traffic declines, and it is not clear that consumers who stop visiting Wendy's for breakfast will simply shift their visits to lunch or dinner. Instead, targeted efforts to improve breakfast awareness, relevance, and differentiation could help Wendy's close one of its largest performance gaps and recapture incremental visits that might otherwise be lost to competitors.
While Wendy's challenges are real, location analytics suggest that the chain is far from starting from scratch. Between its established appeal among younger consumers, its strength with older diners, and a breakfast business that still has room to improve, Wendy's has several levers it can pull to regain momentum. If Bob Wright can apply the same combination of focus, differentiation, and disciplined execution that fueled Potbelly's turnaround, Wendy's may be better positioned for a comeback than recent traffic trends suggest.
For more data-driven 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.
This report leverages location intelligence data to analyze the auto dealership market in the United States. By looking at visit trends to branded showrooms, used car lots, and mixed inventory dealerships – and analyzing the types of visitors that visit each category – this white paper sheds light on the state of car dealership space in 2023.
Prior to the pandemic and throughout most of 2020, visits to both car brand and used-only dealerships followed relatively similar trends. But the two categories began to diverge in early 2021.
Visits to car brand dealerships briefly returned to pre-pandemic levels in mid-2021, but traffic fell consistently in the second half of the year as supply-chain issues drove consistent price increases. So despite the brief mid-year bump, 2021 ended with overall new car sales – as well as overall foot traffic to car brand dealerships – below 2019 levels. Visits continued falling in 2022 as low inventory and high prices hampered growth.
Meanwhile, although the price for used cars rose even more (the average price for a new and used car was up 12.1% and 27.1% YoY, respectively, in September 2021), used cars still remained, on average, more affordable than new ones. So with rising demand for alternatives to public transportation – and with new cars now beyond the reach of many consumers – the used car market took off and visits to used car dealerships skyrocketed for much of 2021 and into 2022. But in the second half of last year, as gas prices remained elevated – tacking an additional cost onto operating a vehicle – visits to used car dealerships began falling dramatically.
Now, the price of both used and new cars has finally begun falling slightly. Foot traffic data indicates that the price drops appear to be impacting the two markets differently. So far this year, sales and visits to dealerships of pre-owned vehicles have slowed, while new car sales grew – perhaps due to the more significant pent-up demand in the new car market. The ongoing inflation, which has had a stronger impact on lower-income households, may also be somewhat inhibiting used-car dealership visit growth. At the same time, foot traffic to used car dealerships did remain close to or slightly above 2019 levels for most of 2023, while visits to branded dealerships were significantly lower year-over-four-years.
The situation remains dynamic – with some reports of prices creeping back up – so the auto dealership landscape may well continue to shift going into 2024.
With car prices soaring, the demand for pre-owned vehicles has grown substantially. Analyzing the trade area composition of leading dealerships that sell used cars reveals the wide spectrum of consumers in this market.
Dealerships carrying a mixed inventory of both new and used vehicles seem to attract relatively high-income consumers. Using the STI: Popstats 2022 data set to analyze the trade areas of Penske Automotive, AutoNation, and Lithia Auto Stores – which all sell used and new cars – reveals that the HHI in the three dealerships’ trade areas is higher than the nationwide median. Differences did emerge within the trade areas of the mixed inventory car dealerships, but the range was relatively narrow – between $77.5K to $84.5K trade area median HHI.
Meanwhile, the dealerships selling exclusively used cars – DriveTime, Carvana, and CarMax – exhibited a much wider range of trade area median HHIs. CarMax, the largest used-only car dealership in the United States, had a yearly median HHI of $75.9K in its trade area – just slightly below the median HHI for mixed inventory dealerships Lithia Auto Stores and AutoNation and above the nationwide median of $69.5K. Carvana, a used car dealership that operates according to a Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS) model, served an audience with a median HHI of $69.1K – more or less in-line with the nationwide median. And DriveTime’s trade areas have a median HHI of $57.6K – significantly below the nationwide median.
The variance in HHI among the audiences of the different used-only car dealerships may reflect the wide variety of offerings within the used-car market – from virtually new luxury vehicles to basic sedans with 150k+ miles on the odometer.
Visits to car brands nationwide between January and September 2023 dipped 0.9% YoY, although several outliers reveal the potential for success in the space even during times of economic headwinds.
Visits to Tesla’s dealerships have skyrocketed recently, perhaps thanks to the company’s frequent price cuts over the past year – between September 2022 and 2023, the average price for a new Tesla fell by 24.7%. And with the company’s network of Superchargers gearing up to serve non-Tesla Electric Vehicles (EVs), Tesla is finding room for growth beyond its already successful core EV manufacturing business and positioning itself for a strong 2024.
Japan-based Mazda used the pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen its standing among U.S. consumers, and the company is now reaping the fruits of its labor as visits rise YoY. Porsche, the winner of U.S New & World Report Best Luxury Car Brand for 2023, also outperformed the wider car dealership sector. Kia – owned in part by Hyundai – and Hyundai both saw their foot traffic increase YoY as well, thanks in part to the popularity of their SUV models.
Analyzing dealerships on a national level can help car manufacturers make macro-level decisions on marketing, product design, and brick-and-mortar fleet configurations. But diving deeper into the unique characteristics of each dealership’s trade area on a state level reveals differences that can serve brands looking to optimize their offerings for their local audience.
For example, analyzing the share of households with children in the trade areas of four car brand dealership chains in four different states reveals significant variation across the regional markets.
Nationwide, Tesla served a larger share of households with children than Kia, Ford, or Land Rover. But focusing on California shows that in the Golden State, Kia’s trade area population included the largest share of this segment than the other three brands, while Land Rover led this segment in Illinois. Meanwhile, Ford served the smallest share of households with children on a nationwide basis – but although the trend held in Illinois and Pennsylvania, California Ford dealerships served more households with children than either Tesla or Land Rover.
Leveraging location intelligence to analyze car dealerships adds a layer of consumer insights to industry provided sales numbers. Visit patterns and audience demographics reveal how foot traffic to used-car lots, mixed inventory dealerships, and manufacturers’ showrooms change over time and who visits these businesses on a national or regional level. These insights allow auto industry stakeholders to assess current demand, predict future trends, and keep a finger on the pulse of car-purchasing habits in the United States.
