A look at which chains stood out in 2021

What chains recovered the most from the pandemic? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast “A Deeper Dive” features Joe Pawlak, managing principal with RB sister company Technomic, to talk about the latest Top 500 Chain Restaurant Report. The 500 largest restaurants grew sales by 18% in 2021—and more than 8% over 2019, effectively recovering from the pandemic. They generated $361.2 billion in total sales. Pawlak talks about why they’ve been able to grow more quickly than anybody anticipated. He talks extensively about what sectors did best, notably fine dining along with some of the biggest chains in the U.S. Among the companies featured in this podcast are McDonald’s, Burger King and, of course, Chick-fil-A.