15 Restaurant Chains With the Most Loyal Customers

Who doesn’t feel passionate about some of their favorite restaurants?

Market Force Information, which provides market research for business clients, surveyed 3,780 North Americans about their most-recent dining experience to find the fast food (also called quick-serve restaurants, or QSR) and casual dining chains to which customers feel the strongest loyalty.

The researchers considered 86 brands, looking at attributes such as cleanliness, service, quality, speed of service, menu appeal and value.

Here, we show the QSR and casual dining chains with the strongest customer loyalty scores in Market Force’s study. As it happens, all but two are in the quick-serve category.

Peet’s Coffee

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Coffee and tea importer Alfred Peet, a Dutchman, arrived in the U.S. in the 1950s after forays in London, Indonesia and New Zealand. He’d learned the trade at his father’s coffee and tea business in Alkmaar, Holland.

In America, he concluded, according to the Peet’s company timeline, “the richest country in the world drinks the lousiest coffee.”

In 1966, Peet opened his first coffee shop, in a working class neighborhood near the University of California campus in Berkeley, California. The rest, as they say, is history.

La Madeleine

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Entrepreneur Magazine, reviewing the basics of investing in various restaurant chains, advises readers that:

“The perfect candidate for a la Madeleine French Bakery & Cafe franchisee has the resources to develop and operate at least three la Madeleine French Bakery Cafes in a given territory.”

La Madeleine French Bakery & Cafe was begun in 1983. The chain has 85 locations nationwide, according to La Madeleine.

Portillo’s

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Portillo’s chain of Chicago-style quick serve foods got started in 1963 as a hot dog stand dubbed The Dog House.

What’s on the menu? Chicago-style hot dogs, of course. But also many more kinds of health food (just kidding): chopped salad, Italian beef sandwiches, cheese fries, homemade chocolate cake and a chocolate cake shake.

Dutch Bros. Coffee

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Two Dutch-American brothers, dairymen Travis and Dane Boersma, left the cows behind and opened a pushcart espresso business in downtown Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1992.

They opened their first franchise in 2000. Community involvement is a big part of the brand.

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers launched in 2002 in Wichita, Kansas, when brothers Bill and Randy Simon joined forces with friend and business partner Scott Redler, The Wichita Eagle reports.

Today, Freddy’s is in 38 states, and soon will open in Canada. It now is owned by private equity firm Thompson Street Capital Partners.

Raising Cane’s

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Chicken fingers, chicken fingers and more chicken fingers. That’s what’s on the menu at Raising Cane’s.

Seem a little obsessed? That’s certainly what the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, restaurant’s founder Todd Graves heard when he submitted the idea as a business plan in a college class. He got the lowest grade in the class. Ditto when he approached banks to fund the business. (Rejected!)

But, after stints as a commercial salmon fisher and a oil refinery boilermaker, Graves built his first restaurant, in his hometown, in 1996.

By June 2023 the chain had 740 locations around the U.S., writes Eat This, Not That! Graves has received much recognition for his success, his story and his philanthropy.

Firehouse Subs

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Firehouse Subs went global in June, opening a restaurant in Switzerland and announcing plans for another in Mexico.

The company was founded in 1994 in Jacksonville, Florida, by two brothers who’d been firefighters.

It recently was acquired by Restaurant Brands International Inc., “one of the world’s largest quick service restaurant companies.”

Jason’s Deli

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Jason’s Deli has 250 delis in 28 states.

Among its offerings: bowls, salads, potatoes and pasta, specialty sandwiches, wraps and paninis, with dedicated menus for vegetarians and the gluten-sensitive. The emphasis is on, in addition to variety, quality “wholesome” ingredients.

Culver’s

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Culver’s has its roots in Sauk City, Wisconsin, where Craig and Lea Culver and Craig’s parents, George and Ruth, opened a restaurant in 1984. The signature dishes –“ButterBurgers” and frozen custard — helped differentiate the company and now Culver’s has franchises in 26 states.

Frozen custard isn’t identical to ice cream, incidentally. Unlike most ice cream, it is made with egg yolks, for a richer flavor, and is different from ice cream in its method of production, explains Food Network.

Texas Roadhouse

• Type of chain: Fast-casual restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.6 out of 5

Texas Roadhouse originated not in Texas but in Clarksville, Indiana. Founder (the late) W. Kent Taylor opened the first Texas Roadhouse there in 1993.

The chain takes pride in making the food it serves on site (“it’s all from scratch“) and most locations recycle their fryer oil to be used for biofuel.

As of 2023, the corporate website reports, there are more than 700 Texas Roadhouse chain restaurants in 49 states and 10 foreign countries. That includes 41 Bubba’s 33 restaurants, and seven Jaggers restaurants.

Five Guys

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.7 out of 5

Five Guys keeps things simple by focusing on a handful of traditional American foods — burgers, dogs, fries and shakes — and doing them well with fresh ingredients.

As the chain’s origin story tells it, Washington, D.C., residents Jerry and Janie Murrell told their children, “Start a business or go to college.” The family — which grew to include five boys — opened its first burger joint in 1986. In 2023, there are 1,700 locations worldwide and 1,500 more in development.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.7 out of 5

True to their name, the 1,235 Tropical Smoothie Cafes across the U.S. serve a variety of vegetable and tropical fruit-based smoothies.

You can place your order on an app and rack up rewards points for purchases. Add health supplements — collagen, multivitamins, pea protein, probiotics and more to your smoothie order. Flatbreads, wraps, quesadillas, sandwiches, salads and breakfast options round out the menu.

Chick-fil-A

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.7 out of 5

Chick-fil-A’s approach to building a distinctive brand began in 1946, the year that Atlanta entrepreneur S. Truett Cathy and his brother, Ben, opened a diner. It spun off, in 1967, the first Chick-fil-A restaurant, in Atlanta’s Greenbriar Shopping Center.

The company remains a family business whose corporate purpose is “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.”

Chick-fil-A has some 2,600 franchise restaurants in 47 states, Washington, D.C., Canada and Puerto Rico. The locations are closed Sundays to give employees a chance to rest and, if they choose, worship.

Pappadeaux

• Type of chain: Fast-casual restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.7 out of 5

Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen is part of the larger family-owned and operated Pappas restaurant chain with around 90 restaurants in seven states (Texas, New Mexico, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, Arizona and Colorado).

The Houston, Texas-based organization takes a “vertical integration” approach: The company owns, makes and operates “almost everything we need,” ensuring control over quality and smooth operation. For example, the Pappas chain owns and drives its delivery trucks and employs electricians “who keep the lights on and the kitchens humming.”

“We even make our own chairs for the dining room floor!” says Pappadeaux.com.

In-N-Out Burger

• Type of chain: Quick-serve restaurant
• This chain’s customer loyalty index: 4.8 out of 5

In-N-Out has passionate fans and a good bit of mystique. The family owned-chain began with a 1948 hamburger stand in Baldwin Park, California. (The company says it was California’s first drive-through hamburger stand.)

To the frustration of fans, In-N-Out has mostly concentrated just on the six-state Western market of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas and Oregon. Recently, however, it announced plans to open restaurants in Tennessee by 2026.

In-N-Out routinely tops lists of best fast food restaurants in the country, says Quilt.AI, in a story on Medium titled “Why In-N-Out Burger Is So Loved.” It says:

“Several famous chefs count themselves among its fans, including Gordon Ramsay and Thomas Keller — the owner and chef of the three Michelin-starred French Laundry. Anthony Bourdain even called it his “favorite restaurant in LA”, high praise for a three-dollar cheeseburger.”