Round 1: If the children are our future, it looks like the future is Applebees.

In this three part series we are breaking down audience visitation from 8 of the most popular Casual Restaurant chains in the business. 

We start with the youngest two generations around - let’s meet the Millennial and Zennial Crowd. They are defined as ranging in age from around 10-40 - that is a pretty sizable gap - so we added additional parameters to hone in on those we care about most. 

For Zennials, we upped the bottom range to 18 and added a couple defining lifestyle characteristics to give a proper view of what it is like to be a Connected Zennial - most likely in college, more time on social media, digital first, etc. 

For Millennials, we looked specifically at the young professional crowd. Those most likely to be unmarried, without kids, solid household income, outdoorsy while urban dwelling, with rich social lives outside of work.

Much to our surprise, the restaurant most in tune with the younger generation, especially Zennials, is none-other than Applebee’s. A look into personal-level visitation data from Jan ‘21 to Jan ‘22 shows that Applebee’s not only ranks highest in visitation out of our elite 8 competition, they also dramatically over index based on their expected share - +167% for Zennials and +113% for Millennials. 

With 50% of the US population now under 40, an investment in attracting the younger generation has never been more important. Recent studies from Punchh claim that loyalty increases can have a 5-20x increase in profits, thus capturing the affections of the most important generations to retail in restaurants over the next 50 years will most likely crown the competitive king for years to come. Not to beat a dead horse, but this is why it is so much more important to know something about who is dining, rather than how many diners there are. In the restaurant game it can make all the difference in the world.