There are 787,301 restaurants on the US map in CUFinder’s places graph as of September 2026. And 88.7% of them carry Google reviews, the highest review coverage of any industry we measure.
Updated September 2026. All first-party figures queried September 17, 2026.
I’m going to be honest with you. Restaurant industry statistics are everywhere, and most of them are the same three numbers quoted in a loop. Sales projection. Job count. “Restaurants are struggling.” Useful, but you can’t build anything with them.
So this page adds what the recycled roundups can’t: listing-level measurements. How many restaurants actually sit on the map, in which states, serving what, with what kind of review profile and digital footprint. Every first-party number comes from a query I ran against CUFinder’s places graph on September 17, 2026. Every external number comes from the National Restaurant Association or the Bureau of Labor Statistics, linked. This report lives in our business statistics hub. Cite anything with a link back.
Restaurant Industry Statistics 2026: The Key Numbers
In a hurry? These are the headline restaurant industry statistics for 2026, each one self-contained:
- 787,301 restaurants hold a public US map listing (CUFinder, September 2026).
- 88.7% of US restaurants have Google reviews, against a 55.5% average across all US businesses (CUFinder, September 2026).
- The average US restaurant review score is 4.21, the toughest of the four industries we measured this month (CUFinder, September 2026).
- Only 10.3% of rated US restaurants hold a 4.8-star average or better (CUFinder, September 2026).
- California has 89,338 restaurants and Florida 88,733, a gap of just 605 listings (CUFinder, September 2026).
- Mexican is the most common named cuisine on the US map: 74,783 restaurants (CUFinder, September 2026).
- US restaurant and foodservice sales are projected to reach $1.55 trillion in 2026 (National Restaurant Association).
- Food services and drinking places employed 12,385,000 people in May 2026 (BLS).
- China lists 3,662,594 restaurants, 4.7 times the US count (CUFinder, September 2026).
Now the detail. And we start with reviews, because that’s where restaurants break every pattern we see in other industries.
How Many Restaurants Are in the US?
787,301 restaurants hold a public US map listing as of September 2026, measured across every restaurant category in CUFinder’s places graph. That’s the storefront count: real places with a pin, a category, and customers walking in.
The economic frame around those storefronts is enormous. The National Restaurant Association projects $1.55 trillion in restaurant and foodservice sales for 2026, with the industry adding more than 100,000 jobs to reach 15.8 million total. The BLS counts 12,385,000 payroll employees in food services and drinking places as of May 2026. Different universes, and that’s normal: the NRA total includes the wider foodservice world beyond payroll restaurants, the way small business statistics always depend on whose definition you count with.
| Measure | Figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| US restaurant listings | 787,301 | CUFinder places graph, September 2026 |
| Projected 2026 sales | $1.55 trillion | National Restaurant Association, 2026 outlook |
| Total foodservice jobs, 2026 | 15.8 million | National Restaurant Association projection |
| Payroll employees (NAICS 722) | 12,385,000 | BLS, May 2026 |
Stat 1: 787,301 US restaurants hold a public map listing (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 2: US restaurant and foodservice sales are projected at $1.55 trillion for 2026, about $1.97 million per listed restaurant across the broader foodservice economy (NRA + CUFinder, 2026).
One working note from someone who’s built restaurant lists for a living: “restaurant” is a fuzzier word than it looks. In 2021 I ran a campaign for a foodtech client where a third of the “restaurants” in their CRM turned out to be ghost kitchens, delivery-only units with no dining room. The map data mostly captures places guests can walk into. Keep that in mind whenever two restaurant counts disagree.
The Most Reviewed Storefront in America
Only 11.3% of US restaurants have zero Google reviews. For the average US business, that number is 44.5%. No other industry we measure comes close to restaurant review coverage.
We measured four industries with the same method in September 2026. Look at the spread:
| Industry | Share with zero Google reviews |
|---|---|
| Restaurants | 11.3% |
| HVAC contractors | 28.1% |
| Landscaping companies | 43.3% |
| All US businesses (baseline) | 44.5% |
| Trucking carriers | 60.4% |
Zero-review share: restaurants vs everyone else
Source: CUFinder places graph (210M+ local business listings), September 2026.
Stat 3: 88.7% of US restaurants (698,354 of 787,301) carry at least one Google review (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 4: A restaurant is roughly four times less likely to sit at zero reviews than the average US business: 11.3% vs 44.5% (CUFinder, September 2026).
Why the gap? Because every restaurant customer is a potential reviewer with an opinion and a phone. A trucking company’s customer is a procurement manager; a restaurant’s customer is 60 covers a night. Reviews are the restaurant industry’s operating system, which is why we broke the zero-review problem down across all industries in our review gap report. For restaurants, the review gap barely exists. What replaces it is a different fight: the fight over the average.
Restaurant Review Scores: The Toughest Crowd
The average US restaurant scores 4.21 stars, the lowest average of the four industries we measured. And only 10.3% of rated restaurants hold a 4.8 or better.
Compare that with the trades: 56.8% of rated HVAC contractors and 56.4% of rated landscapers sit at 4.8-plus. Restaurants? One in ten. Here’s the full distribution across 698,354 rated restaurants:
| Average score band | Share of rated restaurants |
|---|---|
| 4.8 to 5.0 | 10.3% |
| 4.5 to 4.79 | 23.9% |
| 4.0 to 4.49 | 41.6% |
| 3.0 to 3.99 | 22.0% |
| Under 3.0 | 2.1% |
Where restaurant review scores land (rated restaurants)
Source: CUFinder places graph (210M+ local business listings), September 2026.
Stat 5: The average US restaurant Google score is 4.21; the most common band is 4.0 to 4.49, holding 41.6% of rated restaurants (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 6: Only 10.3% of rated US restaurants average 4.8 stars or higher, versus 56.8% of HVAC contractors measured the same way (CUFinder, September 2026).
Diners rate harder than trade customers. A homeowner reviews their landscaper once, usually right after a job they approved. A restaurant gets rated on a Tuesday when the kitchen was slammed and the server was new. Volume plus emotion drags averages toward the middle. So here’s the honest read for operators: a 4.5 restaurant is genuinely elite, sitting in the top third of the industry. Don’t let a 4.8 plumber make you feel bad. We dig into how scores distribute across every category in our online review statistics report.
🔍 Did you know? Fewer than one rated restaurant in forty falls under 3.0 stars. Truly bad restaurants close; the survivors cluster between 3.5 and 4.7.
Which States Have the Most Restaurants?
California leads with 89,338 restaurants, but Florida sits just 605 listings behind at 88,733. Texas is third with 73,014.
That near-tie is new information to most people. California has 39 million residents; Florida has 23 million. Per person, Florida is far denser in restaurants, fed by tourism and retirees who eat out. Here’s the top ten, plus one territory that outranks 40 states:
| State | Restaurant listings |
|---|---|
| California | 89,338 |
| Florida | 88,733 |
| Texas | 73,014 |
| New York | 46,230 |
| Puerto Rico* | 41,764 |
| Pennsylvania | 25,832 |
| Illinois | 25,807 |
| Georgia | 24,012 |
| Ohio | 21,652 |
| North Carolina | 21,406 |
*Puerto Rico is a US territory, not a state; it appears here because it ranks fifth among all US jurisdictions in our data.
Top 10 US states and territories by restaurants
Source: CUFinder places graph (210M+ local business listings), September 2026.
Stat 7: California (89,338) edges Florida (88,733) by just 605 restaurant listings, a 0.7% gap (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 8: Puerto Rico lists 41,764 restaurants, more than 40 US states (CUFinder, September 2026).
Watch the Florida number. At current spread, this decade’s biggest state-level restaurant story is Florida catching California. If you sell to restaurants regionally, that’s where the new-opening energy is.
What Kind of Restaurants? The Cuisine Mix
Mexican is the most common named cuisine on the US restaurant map: 74,783 listings. Fast food follows at 73,458 and pizza at 69,975.
(212,617 places carry only the generic “restaurant” label, so the cuisine ranking covers the named ones.) Here’s the top of the menu, so to speak:
| Cuisine / category | US listings |
|---|---|
| Mexican restaurant | 74,783 |
| Fast food restaurant | 73,458 |
| Pizza restaurant | 69,975 |
| American restaurant | 40,268 |
| Chinese restaurant | 33,727 |
| Italian restaurant | 19,699 |
| Seafood restaurant | 17,905 |
| Chicken restaurant | 17,222 |
| Barbecue restaurant | 16,399 |
| Hamburger restaurant | 13,231 |
The US cuisine mix: top named restaurant categories
Source: CUFinder places graph (210M+ local business listings), September 2026.
Stat 9: Mexican restaurants (74,783) outnumber Italian restaurants (19,699) nearly four to one on the US map (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 10: Mexican, fast food, and pizza together account for 218,216 US restaurants, more than every other named cuisine combined (CUFinder, September 2026).
The classic “American diet” trio of burgers, chicken, and barbecue? All three together still trail pizza alone. And Chinese restaurants, at 33,727, outnumber the hamburger category two and a half to one. The US restaurant map is far more international than the fast-food skyline suggests.
🧠 Fun fact: Add up the named Asian cuisines we track (Chinese, Japanese, sushi, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, and general Asian) and you get more than 82,000 US restaurants. That beats pizza's 69,975.
The Digital Table Stakes
65.8% of US restaurants have a website, and more than a third are on Instagram. Restaurants out-adopt every other industry we measure on visual social media.
| Channel | Restaurants with it | Share of 787,301 |
|---|---|---|
| Phone number | 710,559 | 90.3% |
| Website | 517,781 | 65.8% |
| 324,774 | 41.3% | |
| 275,193 | 35.0% | |
| 247,705 | 31.5% | |
| Email address | 232,938 | 29.6% |
| Twitter/X | 194,949 | 24.8% |
| YouTube | 108,473 | 13.8% |
| TikTok | 102,752 | 13.1% |
Digital channels of US restaurants
Source: CUFinder places graph (210M+ local business listings), September 2026.
Stat 11: 35.0% of US restaurants are on Instagram and 13.1% are on TikTok, the highest shares of any industry we measure (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 12: 3.0% of US restaurants list a mobile number as their main line, ten times the share of landscaping companies (CUFinder, September 2026).
And look at LinkedIn: 31.5% of restaurants have a company page, a higher share than landscaping and trucking combined. That’s not owners networking. That’s chains. Franchise groups and restaurant brands centralize their web presence, and the LinkedIn number is a decent proxy for how much of the industry runs on corporate infrastructure rather than a family iPad by the register.
Food is visual, so Instagram and TikTok adoption makes obvious sense. The number that surprised me is the email one: only 29.6% of restaurants publish an email address. The Hamburg doner shop near my old office had 4.9 stars, a line out the door, and no website or email the entire time I lived there. Restaurants can afford that; the storefront and the feed do the selling.
💡 Pro tip: If you're marketing TO restaurants, don't build an email-first sequence. Seven in ten publish no address. The owners live on the phone between 2 and 5 pm, after lunch service and before dinner.
Which Country Has the Most Restaurants?
China, and it’s not close: 3,662,594 restaurant listings, 4.7 times the US count. The US ranks fourth worldwide, behind China, Indonesia, and India.
| Country | Restaurant listings |
|---|---|
| China | 3,662,594 |
| Indonesia | 1,647,971 |
| India | 1,345,906 |
| United States | 787,301 |
| Mexico | 668,640 |
| Brazil | 566,403 |
| South Korea | 464,018 |
| Thailand | 430,219 |
Which country has the most restaurants?
Source: CUFinder places graph (210M+ local business listings), September 2026.
Stat 13: 14,195,654 restaurants are listed worldwide; the US holds 5.5% of them (CUFinder, September 2026).
Stat 14: China (3,662,594), Indonesia (1,647,971), and India (1,345,906) together hold 47% of the world’s restaurant listings (CUFinder, September 2026).
The US restaurant industry is the biggest in revenue. In sheer storefront count, Asia dwarfs it. Street-food economies list millions of small eateries, and that difference in restaurant culture shows up directly in the data.
The Economics Behind the Counts
The 2026 restaurant economy is projected to be bigger than ever, and tighter than ever, at the same time. Both halves are true.
The NRA’s 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry projects $1.55 trillion in sales with only 1.3% real growth, citing persistent cost pressure and cautious household spending. Employment tells the same two-sided story: 15.8 million projected foodservice jobs, while the BLS counts 12,385,000 payroll employees earning an average $21.94 per hour as of mid-2026.
Stat 15: US restaurant and foodservice sales are projected to grow to $1.55 trillion in 2026, but real growth is just 1.3% after inflation (National Restaurant Association).
Stat 16: Food services and drinking places pay an average $21.94 per hour across 12.4 million payroll employees (BLS, mid-2026).
Squeeze those numbers together and you get the operator’s reality: record revenue, thin margins, expensive labor, and a customer who reads reviews before every visit. The industries that feel like this from the inside are the ones where good data on who’s out there matters most.
What This Means If You Sell to Restaurants
One honest section for the B2B readers. If restaurants are your market, the data says: 787,301 targets, phone-first (90.3% publish numbers, under 30% publish email), review-aware (88.7% have public ratings you can segment by), and visually social. If you need the actual contact data, our restaurant email list covers the US listings with verified contact fields, and our restaurant lead generation guide covers the playbook side. Honest limitation: independent restaurants churn fast, so any restaurant list needs re-verification more often than other industries.
Methodology: Where Every Number Comes From
First-party data. Counts come from CUFinder’s places graph of 210M+ local business listings worldwide, queried September 17, 2026. The US figure (787,301) counts listings with a restaurant category label; supply stores are excluded. Cuisine cuts use each listing’s primary category; 212,617 US places carry only the generic “restaurant” label.
Definitions. A listed restaurant is one storefront place on the map, not a registration or a permit. Digital presence flags are measured per listing. Zero reviews means no Google reviews on record at crawl time; score bands cover rated listings only. We deliberately do not report review-count volume bands, because our crawl stores very high counts conservatively. Puerto Rico appears in the state table as a territory.
External data. Sales and total-jobs projections come from the National Restaurant Association’s 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry; payroll employment and wages from BLS (NAICS 722, May-July 2026). Their universes differ from storefront listings, which is why all figures are labeled with their source.
How to Cite These Restaurant Industry Statistics
Quote any number freely, with a link back. Ready-made citation: “According to CUFinder’s restaurant industry statistics report (September 2026), 787,301 US restaurants hold a public map listing, and 88.7% of them carry Google reviews.” Canonical URL: https://cufinder.io/blog/statistics/restaurant-industry-statistics/
FAQ
How many restaurants are in the US?
787,301 restaurants hold a public US map listing as of September 2026 (CUFinder). Establishment surveys and permit counts run higher because they include foodservice operations without public storefront listings. Always check which universe a count uses.
Which country has the most restaurants?
China, with 3,662,594 listed restaurants, followed by Indonesia and India. The US is fourth at 787,301. By revenue, the US industry remains the world’s largest.
How is the restaurant industry doing in 2026?
Growing, but under pressure. The National Restaurant Association projects $1.55 trillion in 2026 sales and 100,000 added jobs, yet real growth is only 1.3% because costs keep climbing and household spending is cautious.
What state has the most restaurants?
California, with 89,338 listings. Florida is a startling 605 behind at 88,733, and Texas is third at 73,014.
What is the most common type of restaurant in America?
Among named cuisines, Mexican restaurants lead with 74,783 US listings, ahead of fast food (73,458) and pizza (69,975).
What percentage of restaurants have Google reviews?
88.7% of US restaurants have at least one Google review, the highest coverage of any industry we measure. Only 11.3% sit at zero.
What is the average Google rating for a restaurant?
4.21 stars across 698,354 rated US restaurants. The most common band is 4.0 to 4.49. A 4.5-plus average puts a restaurant in roughly the top third of the industry.
How many people work in the restaurant industry?
BLS counts 12,385,000 payroll employees in food services and drinking places (May 2026). The NRA projects 15.8 million total restaurant and foodservice jobs in 2026 under its broader definition.
Do restaurants need a website in 2026?
65.8% have one, but a third thrive without. Maps, reviews, and social feeds carry discovery for many independents. A website helps most where online ordering and reservations drive revenue.
It’s Time to Order the Real Numbers
787,301 restaurants. 88.7% reviewed. A 605-listing race between California and Florida. And a $1.55 trillion economy running on 4.21 stars.
So next time you need restaurant industry statistics, use measured ones with dates and sources. Bookmark this page; the figures refresh as the graph grows.
Want a cut we didn’t publish, by metro, by cuisine, by review band? Tell me. This report grows with its readers. You got this!
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