The biggest competitor to a restaurant today is the grocery store, and the grocer is winning across much of the industry.

In the US, restaurant price inflation has outpaced the rise in grocery prices to such a degree that many consumers feel they have little choice but to cook for themselves or rely on prepared meals bought at a grocer. Between January 2023 and March 2026, the cost of food bought away from home rose by 13.6% in the US, compared with just 5.5% for food eaten at home (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Millions of Americans are painfully aware of this disconnect, especially low- and middle-income consumers. While wealthier Americans have maintained or even increased spending thanks to gains from their financial assets and rising incomes, low- and middle-income consumers have experienced less income growth to cushion them against cost-of-living pressures.

The restaurant industry is already feeling the impact of the inflation and income squeeze. In 2025, restaurant traffic in the US fell about 2.5% in quick service and 1.7% in fast casual. That’s a big drop given the industry’s usual resilience; the decline in 2009 after the global financial crisis wasn’t much worse.

As bad as it is, restaurant spending could deteriorate further. In a recent Bain survey, 41% of US consumers planned to spend less on restaurants and cafés, while 40% aimed to cut back on delivery and takeout. In no other category has the belt-tightening mood been so severe. The story is broadly similar in Europe.

It’s all a marked departure from the growth of convenience-driven spending, a recent propellant for restaurant sales. That favorable trend has been overpowered, temporarily at least. It’s not that busy consumers have suddenly stopped wanting the convenience and pleasure of someone else cooking for them; it’s simply that many have been hit round the head with the economic equivalent of a two-by-four.

Across the industry, executive teams are still figuring out how to adapt to the financial constraints faced by guests. But brands are also wary of value plays that could wreck margins: Presently, the wrong bold move could set a business back further than standing still. The instinct to hunker down is strong.

However, waiting out the storm or making minor course corrections are not winning strategies. Leading players are showing the way to reset their value propositions and strengthen their business by adopting a clear value architecture spanning three elements: breakthrough everyday value, pulses of disruptive value, and personalized value.

Breakthrough everyday value

Breakthrough everyday value involves giving core customers what they love about a brand in a creative, affordable way that grabs their attention. Examples include permanent menu items that consistently shout “value” without compromising on the food quality that customers expect or week-in, week-out combos that are so compelling they go viral on social media.

Price obviously plays a big part in breakthrough everyday value. However, making restaurant visits more affordable isn’t the only factor to consider. Adding premium ingredients, bigger portions, or an innovative value component of a different sort can also make a visit feel more “worth it” to customers. The right balance of accessibility and “worth it” value will vary by brand.

The challenge of achieving breakthrough everyday value might make executive teams pause. Squeezed consumers are a big segment of the market. Would investing in improving a brand’s affordability wreck its profit margin? That’s an understandable worry. Right now, however, inaction is no longer an option. Brands must reinvest in measures that boost traffic, revenue, and income, even if that risks short-term margin erosion.

The good news is that breakthrough everyday value can be achieved without destroying the bottom line. That’s partly because, when done well, it contains tiering that allows guests to spend a little more to get a little more. Providing a ladder of options de-risks the approach considerably as many guests find a way to trade up. There’s also strong evidence that breakthrough everyday value encourages guests to visit more frequently and spend more overall.

Consider the success of Taco Bell. Its well-established Luxe Cravings Boxes deliver textbook breakthrough everyday value, both in terms of eye-catching prices (laddered upward from $5 to $7 and $9) and the array of desirable items included (starting with beef burrito, taco, cinnamon twists, and medium fountain drink for $5).

The Luxe Cravings Boxes have yielded benefits to Taco Bell that more than offset the smaller check, according to Pyxis by Bain & Company e-receipt data. Guests who purchased a Luxe Cravings Box in 2025 visited more than twice as often as those who didn’t, spending twice as much over the year (see Figure 2). Aided by the continued success of the boxes, Taco Bell’s US same-store sales rose by 7% in 2025 and 8% year over year in the first quarter of 2026.

Figure 2

Breakthrough everyday value often requires persistence. Chili’s famously cracked the code with its 3 for Me menu, but not immediately. The value initiative, which offers a drink, appetizer, and entreé for $10.99, was launched in 2022, yet traffic continued to decline. It wasn’t until Chili’s added the Big Smasher Burger to 3 for Me in April 2024 that traffic began to really take off. That tweak enabled 3 for Me to compete directly with quick-service restaurants on portions and price while still allowing guests to trade up.

Finding breakthrough value isn’t easy, but every brand will have a path to achieve differentiated, compelling value. Brands must keep searching and iterating until they strike gold.

Pulses of disruptive value

In addition to providing breakthrough everyday value, most restaurant brands will need to shake up the market every now and then with temporary offers and innovations that act as an additional magnet for traffic.

Chipotle delivered a masterclass in pulses of disruptive value with its “tatted like a Chipotle bag” promotion in the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany. Between 3 PM and 4 PM on Friday, March 13, 2026, guests were offered a buy-one-get-one-free on entrées if they had a tattoo, even a temporary one. The resulting stampede, spurred by viral social media engagement, set a record for Chipotle single-day sales.

Pulses of disruptive value are an effective way to reach the most price-sensitive customers, who might be infrequent visitors. Consider Domino’s Pizza’s time-limited Best Deal Ever promotion. Its disruptiveness lies in its startling breadth: For $9.99, customers can choose any non-stuffed crust, with up to seven toppings.

There are strong signs that this value construct has resonated particularly well with those that need it most: The traffic surge during its July 2025 launch was even more pronounced for less well-off consumers, with the year-over-year growth rate in Domino’s e-commerce transactions jumping 12 percentage points for low-income customers vs. a 7-point bump for high-income counterparts, according to Pyxis (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

The benefits of disruptive value pulses can linger beyond the end of an offer. Brands with the most advanced data capabilities can already see this secondary benefit in the results of their own experiments, which in turn gives them extra confidence to commit to bold value constructs.

Personalized value

Across channels, leading brands are starting to deploy a formidable array of AI decision engines to nudge the right consumers with the right offer or message, in exactly the right way. This personalization works for both guests and the bottom line.

On one hand, guests are delighted by a more relevant message. The substance of any offer or promotion—not just price but other variables, too—can be tailored to their needs and preferences. The timing and creative execution can also be finely calibrated to their inclinations.

Restaurants, on the other hand, can focus their marketing investment on those consumers who are most likely to respond. Personalized value is also a strong catalyst for incremental growth, and not just through upselling. While breakthrough everyday value speaks to a core guest and disruptive value pulls in guests at the margin, personalized value is great at persuading loyal guests to come once more, for instance.

By driving incremental visits, personalized value can have a significant financial impact. Consider a casual-dining restaurant brand that, with Bain’s assistance, used AI-driven personalization to strengthen its loyalty program and unlock true 1:1 customer activation. Individually personalized offers and messages yielded benefits across its active loyalty program, which spanned about 40% of the business. Revenue from active loyalty members rose by 2.5% net of any discounts, while profit from the same guests increased by 1.5%.

Tailored communications can transform marketing effectiveness by creating a more emotional connection. However, merely adopting the latest AI decision engines will not be enough. Brands also need a robust strategy for what gets fed into the engines, which in turn requires the brand to have a clear objective for what it would like the recipient to do.

The foundations of a new value architecture

Restaurant brands can’t afford to be timid right now; the headwinds are so strong that bold and creative moves are needed. However, a value reset is likely to fail if a brand doesn’t have a thorough and up-to-date understanding of its own core customers and why they come.

With that customer-centricity in mind, executive teams can start to lay the foundations of a new value architecture by asking themselves the following questions:

• Do we understand our core customers today—why they come, which other brands they consider us against, and why they don’t come more often?
• How well do we compare with competitors in offering the three forms of value: breakthrough everyday value, pulses of disruptive value, and personalized value?
• How can our brand best allocate finite resources to cut through the noise and create a genuine change in guest perception and visit frequency?

Resetting value is undeniably hard, but the pressure from grocers is not going away. Industry leaders are already succeeding. If they search hard enough, more brands can find their own formula and create a platform for improved long-term growth.