Lila Margalit

Weathering the Storm

Rising gas prices and weakening consumer confidence have weighed on dining traffic in recent months. But Restaurant Brands International (RBI) – the parent company of Burger King, Popeyes, Tim Hortons, and Firehouse Subs – appears to be navigating the pressure better than most. We dove into the data to explore how investments in brand turnaround, value, and product innovation have helped RBI outperform even as quick-service restaurant (QSR) traffic softened.

Value and Brand Investments Buffer Against Industry Declines

Q2 2026 was a challenging quarter for QSRs, with overall category visits falling 3.0% year over year (YoY) and average visits per location declining 2.7%. Against that backdrop, RBI held up remarkably well – overall visits to its four brands slipped just 0.5% YoY, while average visits per location were essentially flat compared with Q2 2025.

Burger King, building on the momentum of its "Reclaim the Flame" turnaround strategy, drove much of that resilience. Fresh off a 5.8% U.S. same-store sales gain in Q1, the chain posted 1.7% YoY growth in average visits per location in Q2, while overall visits also edged higher despite continued fleet optimization.

Firehouse Subs – RBI's smallest but fastest-growing brand by unit count and its only fast-casual concept – also outperformed. Despite continuing to expand its footprint, the chain posted 1.7% YoY growth in average visits per location, comfortably ahead of the broader fast-casual category (+0.4%).

Burger King and Firehouse Subs Sustain Visits Amid Rising Gas Prices

Monthly data shows that conditions became more challenging as the quarter progressed. Even so, Burger King and Firehouse Subs largely maintained their momentum.

Burger King kept same-store visits positive from February through May before slipping only marginally into negative territory in June (-0.2%). The performance reflects a combination of menu innovation and value-focused promotions: The new elevated Whopper generated the brand's highest Whopper average unit volumes in more than three years, while $5 Duos and $7 Trios helped attract budget-conscious diners. Pop-culture partnerships also kept the brand top of mind.

Firehouse Subs, meanwhile, saw visits peak in May following the launch of its Steak & Cheese Melts. The rollout was amplified by a playful one-day giveaway offering a free sub to anyone named Mike (or Michelle) – a tongue-in-cheek nod to rival Jersey Mike's that generated significant attention.

Early Signs of a Popeyes Recovery?

Popeyes spent much of the first half of the year struggling, with visits declining YoY nearly every month and May marking the steepest drop. But June brought signs of stabilization, with visits returning to flat as the chain intensified its value strategy.

The return of the $6 Big Box and $20 Family Meal, combined with the previously launched $5 Faves platform and newly permanent $3.99 Chicken Wraps, appears to have resonated with customers. While it remains early, Popeyes’ June rebound offers an encouraging early signal for the second-half recovery outlined by management, as the brand refocuses on value and its core menu.

Tim Hortons' relatively small U.S. footprint continued to post visit declines throughout the first half. However, the brand’s center of gravity remains in Canada, where it has delivered 20 consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales.

The Bottom Line

RBI enters the second half of 2026 with a clear traffic advantage over the broader QSR industry. The question now is whether it can sustain that edge. Can Burger King continue to outperform despite a more challenging consumer environment? Will Firehouse Subs maintain its strong same-store traffic as it continues expanding? And does Popeyes' June stabilization mark the start of a sustained turnaround, or merely a temporary lift from renewed promotions?

For more data-driven dining insights, visit placer.ai/anchor. 

Entering H2 With an Edge

As if 2026 hadn't thrown enough challenges at QSRs, July's lettuce recall put Taco Bell in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. But a look at Yum! Brands' visit performance since the beginning of the year shows that the company has held a clear advantage over the broader quick-service restaurant category – and despite this curveball, it is heading into H2 on solid footing.

Yum! Held Its Ground While the Category Pulled Back

Rising gas prices and a sustained pullback among lower-income diners weighed on fast-food traffic this spring, sending overall QSR visits down 3.0% year over year (YoY) in Q2 and average visits per location down 2.7%. Yum! held up considerably better, with overall visits slipping just 0.5% and average visits per location rising 1.0%.

That relative resilience was broad-based, with all three of Yum's QSR brands outperforming the category on average visits per location. Most intriguingly, Pizza Hut – the brand Yum! agreed in June to sell for $2.7 billion – posted the portfolio’s strongest per-location growth, at 4.4% YoY. The Habit Burger & Grill also stood out, with overall visits rising 4.3% – well ahead of the fast-casual category’s 1.7% gain.

Taco Bell's Growth Streak Cooled as the Year Progressed

Taco Bell entered Q2 with strong momentum, having posted 8% same-store sales growth in Q1 – its eighth consecutive quarter of outperforming the QSR industry. 

Visit growth moderated as the year progressed, turning modestly negative in May and June as Taco Bell lapped a strong 2025 and the broader QSR slowdown deepened. Even so, quarterly traffic came in essentially flat – roughly three percentage points ahead of the wider category – likely buoyed by the chain’s Luxe Value Menu and Live Más product innovation blitz. Heading into H2, the question is whether that combination of value and innovation can reaccelerate traffic – and how the July recall, which began just after the quarter ended, will weigh on visits.

Pizza Hut Rightsizing Right

After a year of closing underperforming locations, Pizza Hut emerged as Yum’s same-store traffic leader in Q2, posting low-single-digit YoY visit growth throughout the quarter. Demand transfer from shuttered stores likely helped, but so did a nostalgia-driven value push, including the Tom Brady “Pizza Before the Hut” campaign and the $10 return of the Big New Yorker. With July’s Throwback Value Menu extending that strategy, LongRange Capital appears set to acquire a leaner, more productive business.

KFC Kept Its Comeback Simmering

KFC also continued its rightsizing efforts, but the payoff at remaining locations was more muted. Same-store visits trended slightly negative in April, May, and June, while total visits fell 3.5% YoY – suggesting that some demand from shuttered stores may have shifted to competitors in the crowded chicken category.

Still, the chain's highly successful "Kentucky Fried Comeback" remained in full swing in Q2, with initiatives such as tiered Box Feast value bundles and a Supergirl movie tie-in helping keep same-store traffic close to year-ago levels.

The Habit Burger & Grill Led Fast Casual 

Fast-casual chain The Habit Burger & Grill posted Yum’s strongest overall visit growth in Q2, though growth slowed as the year progressed. In addition to mounting macroeconomic headwinds, Habit’s Southern California-heavy footprint faced increasingly difficult comparisons as the disruption from the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires faded from the prior-year baseline.

Even so, overall traffic remained positive throughout Q2, while same-store visits either grew or stayed close to flat – suggesting the chain is expanding without materially weakening demand at existing locations.

Can Yum! Sustain Its Traffic Advantage?

Yum! Brands closed the first half of 2026 ahead of its respective segments on per-location traffic, even as Taco Bell – the primary engine of its recent outperformance – lost momentum. The question now is whether the portfolio can maintain its advantage in H2. Can Taco Bell reaccelerate traffic while protecting profitability? Will Pizza Hut sustain its stronger per-location performance through the ownership transition? And can KFC turn its promotional momentum into a more durable traffic recovery?

Follow placer.ai/anchor to find out. 

The Grounds for Growth

Coffee shops remain one of dining’s most dependable bright spots, as consumers continue to splurge on affordable indulgences even while cutting back on pricier outings. In H1 2026, coffee visits were up 4.1% year over year (YoY), even as overall dining traffic fell 0.4%. But in some metros, the caffeine rush was running much stronger.

This month's Placer 5 highlights the nation’s top five major coffee markets – metro areas that logged upwards of 10 million coffee shop visits in H1 2026, where coffee shops saw the most YoY visit growth. Each one is thriving for its own reasons, and together they show that there are many ways to win at coffee.

A Different Roast in Every Metro

For many of these metros, coffee visit growth was driven at least in part by fleet expansion. But in all five markets, average visits per coffee shop also rose YoY, suggesting that existing venues are also drawing bigger crowds.

Still, each metro brews its own story.

In inland California’s Riverside and Bakersfield, the surges were powered primarily by Starbucks and Dutch Bros, with Bakersfield – the only analyzed metro without an increase in major coffee chain locations in H1 – seeing traffic at existing coffee shops rise significantly even as the overall store count edged down.

In Indianapolis and Kansas City, meanwhile, coffee visits were propelled in part by the drive-thru coffee wave sweeping the middle of the country – a format with so much momentum that Technomic’s 2026 America’s Favorite Chains ranking featured three drive-thru coffee brands in its top 10 for the first time ever. Alongside new Dutch Bros locations, fast-growing 7 Brew also expanded its footprint in both metros. Their car-friendly layouts make Indianapolis and Kansas City natural magnets for the format – and with per-location visits still climbing, the new stands appear to be filling up as fast as they open.

Orlando, for its part, appears to be riding a more general demand wave. The metro's population grew 1.29% between July 2024 and July 2025 – well ahead of the 0.52% national average – while record tourist visits kept vacation mornings busy. More residents and more visitors translate directly into more lattes – and several major chains added stores to keep pace.

However You Take It

Tourism and population growth in Orlando, a drive-thru boom in the heartland, and steady strength in inland California – the standout coffee metros of 2026 each found their own path to growth. And it's worth noting that all five sit far from Stars Hollow of Gilmore Girls’ fame: the Northeast may claim the diner-counter coffee mystique, but the caffeine craze is a truly national affair. 

The result is a coffee category that remains highly adaptable. Whether fueled by convenience, expansion, tourism, or loyal daily routines, America's coffee shop segment continues to find new ways to keep visits percolating. 

The Tug-of-War Continues

The return-to-office (RTO) wars are grinding on. Mandates are expanding across the private and public sectors, and employers are getting more serious about enforcement. But even as the share of Fortune 100 companies requiring full-time in-person work has climbed to 55%, employees continue to push back in ways both visible and subtle – from protests and petitions to "hushed hybrid" workarounds and coffee badging – quiet quitting's caffeinated cousin.

So where does actual attendance stand? We dove into the data to find out.

June Sets a New RTO Record

Nationwide office visits in June 2026 jumped 8.5% year over year (YoY) and stood 21.0% below June 2019 levels. But June 2026 also came with a calendar assist: The month had 21 working days, compared to 20 in both June 2025 and June 2019. And Juneteenth fell on a Friday this year, rather than a Thursday as in 2025 – meaning the holiday landed on what is typically the week’s quietest office day, likely blunting its drag on attendance.

On a per-working-day basis, office visits rose a more modest 3.3% YoY, continuing the slow but stubborn climb the index has traced for the past several months. Still,  even when normalizing for business days, June emerged as the single busiest in-office month since COVID began in March 2020.

Momentum Across the Board

Market-level data shows that many analyzed metros – including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami – reached new post-pandemic office attendance highs in June after adjusting for the number of working days. But Miami was the clear June RTO winner, with office visits surpassing 2019 levels. Critically, this is still an estimation, and it remains to be seen how Miami’s recovery will continue to play out over the long term. Still, the obvious takeaway is that the Florida hub – which has also seen the lowest vacancy rate of any major U.S. office market in recent months – is in an especially strong position as the RTO continues. 

Every major market also posted YoY visit growth, with Los Angeles leading the pack. The market was lapping a soft June 2025, when local protests disrupted commuting routines – though L.A.’s solid showing in recent months suggests the jump reflects more than an easy comparison. San Francisco ranked second, continuing the momentum that made it the YoY growth leader in May. And Chicago also logged a substantial YoY gain, moving into the middle of the post-pandemic recovery pack as its downtown office market recorded its first vacancy decline in fifteen quarters in Q2 2026.

Still Climbing

With California's four-day mandate for state workers taking effect July 1, and full-time office requirements set to roll out this September at employers including Fidelity and TikTok, the second half of 2026 may bring fresh RTO tailwinds. Will these policies push the recovery even further ahead? And will Miami's move above pre-COVID levels hold over time? Time will tell.

For more data-driven RTO insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor. 

An Urban Bellwether

From Michigan Avenue to Main Street, retail corridors have long served as a barometer of urban vitality – and their post-pandemic trajectory has become one of the most closely watched storylines in retail real estate. We dove into the data to see how these districts are faring in 2026, and what AI-powered location analytics reveal about when, and why, people are showing up.

The Corridor Recovery Takes a Breather

After several years of gradual improvement, the post-pandemic retail corridor recovery stalled in early 2026. Visits remained 12.6% below 2019 levels in Q1 and 12.5% below in Q2, reversing some of the gains made during 2025, when the Q2 gap had narrowed to just 9.5%. The slowdown coincided with a broader cooling in consumer demand, with shoppers growing more selective and trimming discretionary purchases.

Friday and Saturday Nights Are Back

So what's behind the widening recovery gap, and where are the bright spots?

Comparing Q2 2026 visits with Q2 2019 by daypart shows that the largest remaining recovery deficit is concentrated during weekday mornings and afternoons, with Monday through Friday visits between 8 AM and 4 PM still running 20% to 30% below pre-pandemic levels. That pattern closely mirrors office attendance trends, which remained roughly 30% below pre-pandemic levels this spring. With fewer commuters flowing through downtowns, the coffee runs, lunch breaks, and midday errands that once sustained corridor traffic have yet to fully return.

The pattern, however, is markedly different on weekends. Visit gaps on Saturday and Sunday mornings were significantly smaller and narrowed throughout the day before disappearing entirely by evening. Friday visits between 8 PM and 12 AM exceeded Q2 2019 levels by 2.0%, while Saturday evening visits came in 0.7% above the pre-pandemic benchmark. 

In other words, while remote work continues to reshape weekday routines and consumers scale back daytime shopping, retail corridors remain compelling destinations for entertainment, socializing, and dining. The trend aligns with broader consumer spending patterns showing that even budget-conscious households continue to prioritize experiences over goods. It also reflects what's happening on the ground in downtowns nationwide, where restaurants are driving retail leasing activity and cities are increasingly investing in programming that attracts visitors after hours.

Evening Momentum Continues YoY 

Year-over-year data also shows that even though the recovery has stalled, evenings continue to gain momentum. Although overall retail corridor visits fell 3.3% in Q2 2026, nighttime visitation increased across the week. Weekend mornings also proved relatively resilient, while midday shopping hours (12 PM to 4 PM) posted the steepest declines. 

At the same time, average dwell time rose from 118.0 minutes in Q2 2025 to 123.0 minutes in Q2 2026. So while fewer people may be visiting retail corridors overall, those who do visit appear to be staying longer than they did last year – a sign that corridors are increasingly serving as destinations in their own right.

The Night Shift

Retail corridors may still be waiting on the office worker, but they are increasingly winning the off-the-clock hours. As daytime shopping softens, evenings have become the corridors' engine of growth – especially on Fridays and Saturdays – powered by diners, barhoppers, and experience-seekers who keep showing up even as they tighten their belts elsewhere. For retailers, restaurants, property owners, and civic stakeholders, the evening and weekend windows look like the clearest growth opportunities of 2026.

Will nighttime visitation continue gaining momentum in the second half of the year? Or will office recovery finally spark a weekday daytime comeback? Visit placer.ai/anchor to find out.

Betting on Shrimp

When Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in May 2024, much of the blame landed on a single menu item: a $20 Ultimate Endless Shrimp deal that proved far too popular for its own margins. The chain shuttered roughly 130 locations, was acquired by Fortress Investment Group, and brought in a new CEO to steady the brand.

So the decision to bring Endless Shrimp back in spring 2026 – this time as a limited-run promotion – wasn't an obvious one. We dove into the data to see how the relaunch is landing, and what it would take for Red Lobster's comeback to hold.

A Strong Traffic Rebound

In the weeks before the Endless Shrimp relaunch, the average number of visits to each Red Lobster location was running below year-ago levels – down by as much as 8.7% year over year (YoY) the week of April 13, and lagging the broader full-service restaurant segment.

Then came April 20. During the first full week of the Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion, Red Lobster's per-location visits flipped sharply positive and have stayed there since, peaking at 24.3% YoY the week of April 27 and holding double-digit gains into early June – though the magnitude of the boost has gently eased over time. Notably, this outperformance came while full-service restaurant traffic remained roughly flat YoY.

Beyond The Promotion

The traffic surge suggests that Red Lobster's brand equity remains strong. Even after bankruptcy, store closures, and years of operational challenges, the chain was able to generate a meaningful visitation lift by bringing back one of its most recognizable promotions.

But Endless Shrimp can only do so much – and the pressures facing the chain, from elevated seafood costs to a burdensome lease portfolio, will remain even after the promotion inevitably ends. As the company continues to rightsize and improve profitability, the key question is whether its investments in menu innovation and customer experience will be enough to garner lasting customer loyalty. Will Endless Shrimp have a better ending this time around? 

Visit Placer.ai/anchor to find out.