How many casual dining restaurants are in the United States?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 08 Nov 2005 16:56 PST

Have a look at this very comprehensive report from the US Census Bureau:


http://www.census.gov/prod/ec02/ec0272i02.pdf
Economic Census:  Food Services and Drinking


They don't specifically have a class of "casual dining", but their
statistics (from Table 1) show that there are:


504,430 restaurants in the US (what they call "Food services and drinking places")


These are pretty much divided half and half into "full service
restaurants" and "limited service eating places"


Full service    -- 195,492

Limited service -- 228,848


The remaining tables in the report provide even further breakouts of
these categories.


In another question on restaurants, I provided an estimate that there
are 40,000 'fine dining' restaurants in the US:


http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=577867


If you define "casual dining" to mean all the full service restaurants
in the country that are NOT fine dining restaurants, then you're left
with:

195,492 - 40,000 = 155,492 casual full service restaurants.


Does that work for you?


pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by mhp69-ga on 08 Nov 2005 18:20 PST

A casual dining restaurant has an average per person tab of $10-$15. 
If no further stratification can be done on your calculation, I can
accept your calculation as accurate for my needs.