We spent much of last year reporting on bankruptcies and mass closures that disproportionately impacted the full-service segment, but some of those right-sizing efforts may be starting to pay off. According to new data from Placer.ai, the full-service segment experienced a 1.5% drop in overall visits between January and May, however visits-per-location were basically stable at +0.2%.

Closures of dozens of locations (or more) at chains such as Red Lobster, TGI Fridays, Hooters, Denny’s, Outback Steakhouse, Applebee’s, and Red Robin impacted overall visit numbers in the segment, but the remaining locations effectively absorbed traffic to maintain performance levels from 2024, according to Placer.ai’s “Out-of-Home Dining in 2025” report.

Further, May data shows that both overall and visit-per-location numbers were positive during the month, indicating that the segment has some momentum going into the second half of the year.

Conversely, both quick-service and fast-casual segments saw visit-per-venue at -1.5% and -1.2%, respectively. At the same time, QSRs overall visits dipped slightly (-0.8%), while traffic to fast-casual chains increased slightly (0.3%), suggesting that fast casual is expanding faster than QSR.

Fast-casual concepts also tend to attract higher-income consumers compared to QSR, which may be insulating the segment more. The only three segments with year-over-year visitation growth were casual dining, fine dining, and coffee, which also skew toward higher-income guests.

Indeed, fine dining and coffee experienced the strongest overall visitation trends, up 1.3% and 2.6% year-over-year, respectively. However, visits-per-location were negative for both segments (-0.8% and -1.8%, respectively), suggesting that such visits are coming from concepts’ expansion versus busier restaurants. 7 Brew, for instance, grew its footprint by nearly 80% year-over-year in 2024, according to Technomic, while Starbucks added hundreds of new locations. On the fine dining side, Capital Grille’s unit count increased by 6.5%, while Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille jumped by 9.5%, STK increased by 23.5%, and Smith & Wollensky increased by 14.3%.

When it comes to dayparts, each segment seems to have its own advantages. QSR, fast casual, and coffee concepts experienced higher shares of visits during the week, while casual and fine dining ruled the weekends.

QSRs have the largest share of weekday visits, with 72.3% of traffic generated between Monday and Friday. Fast casual and coffee both generate nearly 70% of their visits during the week. On the full-service side, casual and fine dining both generate about 39% of their visits during the weekend. Nearly 20% of fine dining visits occur on Friday.

Unsurprisingly, most of fine dining visits (nearly 70%) occur between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. Casual dining gets a bump between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., while QSRs lead all segments during the late-night daypart, with 4.1% of all visits occurring between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. That number could increase as more chains extend and market their late-night hours.

Also unsurprisingly, coffee leads the morning daypart, with nearly 15% of all visits taking place prior to 8 a.m., and 65% occurring prior to 2 p.m. Meanwhile, fast casual leads the lunch daypart, with about 30% of all visits happening between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. According to Placer, this suggests that each dining segment effectively “owns” a different part of the day.

Overall dining visits basically held steady in the first five months of 2025, with year-over-year visits down just 0.5%. Most of the country experienced slight declines, while 14 states — Utah, Idaho, Nevada, California, Washington, Oregon, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, Florida, Arizona, and Vermont — experienced traffic increases to kick off the year.