When you walk into a chain restaurant, time stands still. For some young people, that’s the whole point.
Ana Babic Rosario, a professor of marketing at the University of Denver, calls this “emotional time travel.”
With the country in an unstable economic time, potentially edging toward recession, those memories become more potent, Dr. Babic Rosario said. “We tend to crave some of those nostalgic moments because we think they’re more stable,” she said. “That’s how our mind tends to remember the past — more rosy than it really was.”
That’s true for Bea Benares, 27, who said she looked forward to meals at Outback Steakhouse and “eating the bread and sitting down with my family.”
“Now with fast causal, you may not sit down and you go your separate ways afterward,” Ms. Benares said, referring to eateries catering to office workers, like Sweetgreen and Cava. “It sounds kind of funny, but you lose a sense of community. It’s kind of sad.”
That missing sense of community may be why 10,000 people, mostly in their 20s, traveled to Randall’s Island in New York last fall to attend Chain Fest, a food festival started by the “Office” actor B.J. Novak that served “exclusive gourmet versions” of classic chain restaurant dishes from Red Robin, Cracker Barrel and others. The festival’s Los Angeles version had a 25,000-person wait list.
For many chain restaurants, a new generation’s interest is an exciting opportunity. The big question, though, is whether they can count on Gen Z beyond flashy events and viral moments. Catering to younger diners, some of whom say they want more updated food options, is a financial gamble that can alienate chain restaurants’ core customers — baby boomers, who want consistency.
Gen Z made up only 17 percent of patrons at sit-down, midprice casual dining establishments in 2024, and millennials made up 32 percent, according to Datassential, a market research firm. Baby boomers and Gen X make up a majority of the customer base.
That means if younger diners are going to revive the fortunes of chain restaurants, they will have to eat at these establishments more frequently. The industry has been struggling for a good part of the last decade as changing consumer tastes and a variety of delivery options and fast casual chains have become more popular. Contributing to the decline is that Americans are not eating out as much as they used to with their friends and family. A February survey by Datassential found that 29 percent are eating out less often with groups.
Some of the young people The New York Times spoke to at Chain Fest said that although they had fond memories of eating at chain restaurants, they wouldn’t do so regularly.
Christy Abraham, 28, said dining at a chain restaurant was a “fun walk down memory lane” that transported her back to a simpler time during childhood in Miami, her hometown. But when asked if she would eat at one regularly, Ms. Abraham said that “nostalgia is not enough to make me a repeat customer” and that she went to dine-in chain restaurants only when she was with her family.
Ms. Benares said she mourned the community space that her local Outback Steakhouse used to provide but hadn’t been to one since the location closed in 2018. Instead, when she craves comfort food, she chooses Panda Express and newer burger franchises.
And Nicole Willis said getting her to be a loyal customer meant restaurants would need to be “more creative with the menu, being willing to try new things,” adding that “the palate has definitely changed.”
Some brands that have leaned into the cultural revival have fared well. Chili’s, for example, whose cachet peaked in the 1990s for many with its “Baby Back Ribs” jingle, saw its sales jump more than 31 percent in its latest quarter from a year earlier. Viral videos of people dipping and pulling long stringy mozzarella sticks helped to boost sales. Last month, the chain featured the ’90s star Tiffani Thiessen of “Saved by the Bell” fame in its ads for $6 margarita specials.
Kevin Hochman, chief executive of Brinker International, the parent company of Chili’s, told analysts on an earnings call this year that a “new generation” of diners was discovering the brand and “putting Chili’s back in culture again.”
“The opportunity is, how do we reintroduce the brand to a generation that may have never even experienced Chili’s or has beliefs about Chili’s based on what their parents experienced?” Mr. Hochman said in an interview.
Brinker’s share price has more than doubled over the past year.
Rainforest Cafe, a tropical-themed chain popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is also seeing some benefits in younger diners’ interest. Earl Milczark, the chain’s regional vice president, said more 25- to 35-year-olds who visited the chain as children now wanted to “revisit their experience” with their own children and friends. The chain’s pop-up at the Empire State Building in October brought in some 32,000 people for dishes like Anaconda Pasta and Treetop Filet.
Some smaller chains are seeing a resurgence in younger diners, too. In the past five years, diners in their 20s have become a larger customer base for brands like California Pizza Kitchen and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, according to Technomic, a food services research firm.
Last fall, Red Lobster resurrected hush puppies after a backlash on social media from young people when the restaurant took them off the menu. But the restaurant chain, which filed for bankruptcy last year, has to tread lightly with changes because older diners “make up a significant portion of our customer base,” said Damola Adamolekun, the company’s chief executive.
“These are folks who have come to Red Lobster for a long time,” he said. “They know exactly what their favorite dishes are. This baby boomer generation of guests have their routines and really kind of brought us to where we are right now.”
Still, Dr. Babic Rosario predicts that brands will try to take advantage of rising interest from younger diners and that there will be more retro packaging and reboots of dishes from the past. But she cautioned that “when we bring something from the past to today’s audiences, these audiences might be very different from audiences that originally experienced something.”
That means that while nothing may feel as comforting as the huge, varied menus and crab nets décor that take you back to your childhood, no amount of endless shrimp will resurrect Sunday dinners with Grandma or your date before the homecoming dance. Only new regular customers creating new memories with their loved ones while squeezed into cozy booths can save the middle-class restaurant.
The post Can Gen Z’s Nostalgia Save Chain Restaurants? appeared first on New York Times.
