These 5 Fast Food Chains Need To Turn Things Around In 2023

For anyone interested at all in the twists and turns of the fast food industry, there's better set of data to sink one's teeth into than the Top 500 Report from Nation's Restaurant News. An annual ranking of fast food and fast casual restaurants by total sales and year-over-year growth, this report lets us not only track which chains are doing the most business, but which ones are positioning themselves for huge gains from one quarter to the next. Conversely, it lets us see which restaurants are slipping, too—an early warning sign that they might need to make some changes if they hope to turn the business around.

Out of the top 50 restaurants in America—a list that includes fast food, fast casual, and full-service restaurant chains—only five brands saw a net loss in systemwide sales last year. Though all five restaurants did multi-billion-dollar business in 2022, the year-over-year declines ranged from minimal to potentially concerning. Here's a closer look at each.

As we've discussed, Domino's came out on top in the Pizza Wars in 2022, earning $8.6 billion and ranking highest among all national pizza chains and beating out Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, and Little Caesars by several slots. (Domino's ranked 10th overall; its nearest competitor, Pizza Hut, ranked 13th.) All that said, however, its sales were still down by 0.8% versus 2021. One potential reason for this is that chain pizza has a strong association with sitting at home, which we were all still doing a lot of in 2021 before the COVID vaccine rolled out. As we increasingly head back into the bustling post-pandemic world, Domino's is evidently trying to meet us where we are by rolling out Pinpoint Delivery, technology that will allow customers to order a pizza virtually anywhere.

Jack in the Box isn't exactly the first fast food brand on anyone's mind—coming in at number 22 in the Top 500 Report, its sales fell by 1.1% in 2022. However, the chain might be an embodiment of the phrase "you gotta spend money to make money": In March 2022, the chain fully acquired Del Taco, and the two mostly West Coast restaurants are being positioned for nationwide expansion. To aid in its eastward push, Jack in the Box announced a new store model with half the square footage of existing units, a design meant to better accommodate mobile, pickup, and drive-thru orders (all of which account for the vast majority of its business). We believe in you, Jack.

America's second most loved pizza chain sits at 13th in the rankings this year, having earned $5.3 billion in 2022, or 4.3% less than 2021. That's a farther backslide than Domino's, but part of this downturn might be a matter of timing. The Top 500 Report takes all 2022 sales data into account, but only at the very end of 2022 did we see the release of Pizza Hut's new Melts, which aim to lure Gen Z to the business and which have contributed to positive "same-store sales growth, transaction growth, new customers and repeat customers" since their launch, according to Pizza Hut CEO Aaron Powell at Investor Day in December. Given those trends, perhaps next year's data will mark a turnaround for Pizza Hut.

Sonic sits at a respectable 12th place in this year's rankings, but its $5.5 billion in sales indicate a 5.8% fall from 2021. We can't think of a single thing we dislike about Sonic; the ice cream is great, the crunchy ice is beloved, and its vast menu seeks to comfort virtually any customer. However, despite a few splashy releases, its menu has failed to generate serious buzz the same way that, say, Subway's has recently. Rather than being drawn in by limited-time promotions, customers seem to return to Sonic again and again for its classic standbys. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it could mean that Sonic will remain, for now, a middle-of-the-pack option.

"It's fair to say our core customer, the customer who comes to KFC most frequently, is older than the average quick-service customer," Nick Chavez, KFC's Chief Marketing Officer, told Nation's Restaurant News in February, "And we need to bring in new audiences and invite new generations of customers to discover or rediscover KFC." Though the chain was ranked 16th in 2022 sales and fell a worrisome 8.1%, KFC might have already solved the issue in 2023 by adding nuggets to the permanent menu. This new option caters to a younger audience, and seems to be succeeding at drawing in that most coveted demographic: families with young kids. If customers continue to flock to KFC's nuggets, then its 8.1% backslide might be entirely righted by the time the Top 500 Report is released next year. (The nuggets are awesome, but even if those aren't your thing, go for the sandwich.)