Surely, only a matter of time before the Texas based “Whataburger” expands to the Triangle
One of the amenities of an office park is its convenience to a variety of places to go to lunch. At Amy Bush Commercial, we are quite fond of brown bagging a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and there are times we conduct business over a meal at a white tablecloth restaurant, but there is no denying that limited-service restaurants are the bread and butter of workplace lunch choices. We are fortunate here in the Triangle to have a plethora of options conveniently located near our commercial properties.
In the 2017 Foods News Media rankings, Chick-Fil-A tops the limited-service restaurant industry in sales per location. Here is the list of the top seven – with Whataburger the only missing restaurant in our area.
| QSR 50 RANK | COMPANY | CATEGORY | 2016 U.S. SYSTEMWIDE SALES (MILLIONS) | 2016 U.S. AVERAGE SALES PER UNIT (THOUSANDS) |
NUMBER OF FRANCHISED UNITS IN 2016 | NUMBER OF COMPANY UNITS IN 2016 | TOTAL UNITS IN 2016 | TOTAL CHANGE IN UNITS FROM 2015 | |
| 8 | Chick-fil-A | Chicken | 7,973.50 | 4,407.10 | 1,730 | 372 | 2,102 | 119 | |
| 23 | Whataburger | Burger | 2,181.35 | 2,706.00 | 122 | 684 | 806 | 15 | |
| 11 | Panera Bread | Sandwich | 5,200.00 | 2,700.00 | 1,134 | 908 | 2,042 | 70 | |
| 43 | Jason’s Deli | Sandwich | 646.59 | 2,609.00 | 109 | 155 | 264 | 4 | |
| 1 | McDonald’s* | Burger | 36,389.00 | 2,550.00 | 13,046 | 1,109 | 14,155 | -104 | |
| 25 | Zaxby’s* | Chicken | 1,891.98 | 2,318.60 | 677 | 139 | 816 | 91 | |
| 27 | Culver’s | Burger | 1,301.38 | 2,252.20 | 597 | 8 | 605 | 46 |
What’s your favorite? We had a conversation at our office and Panera Bread was the go-to place. We spoke with another friend who we always see there and he suggested that there are two kinds of people in the world, these who get Panera Bread and those who don’t.
What’s missing for this list? Our home state star Bojangles probably has the most passionate followers. How many of us could resist stopping for some Bojangles’ buttermilk biscuits at 6am on our way to the beach!
Hope you are having a wonderful summer at the beach, or the mountains, or back in the Triangle. We will look for you at lunch.