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