Drive-thru and other convenience-oriented restaurant visits are losing momentum, signaling a shift that CRE investors in retail and outparcel assets can't ignore even as overall restaurant traffic shows more nuance, according to the latest Dining Index from Placer.ai.
Short-duration visits of less than 10 minutes—which Placer.ai notes can include drive-thru, pickup and delivery—underperformed broader restaurant traffic in May across both quick-service and fast-casual chains.
For investors, the data point to a potential inflection in the drive-thru-heavy operating model that has underpinned pricing and development of many outparcel pads, endcaps and single-tenant net lease assets over the past several years.
According to Placer.ai, short-duration visits to quick-service restaurants fell 6.8% year over year in May, a steeper drop than the segment's overall 4.4% traffic decline. In fast casual, short visits slipped 1.9%—the first decline for that metric this year—even as total traffic for the segment remained slightly positive at 0.7% year-over-year growth.
That widening gap between overall visits and quick-turn transactions suggests that a greater share of restaurant demand is migrating away from pure convenience occasions toward longer, more experience-oriented visits.
Placer.ai's broader Dining Index shows that full-service restaurants posted a 0.7% year-over-year increase in visits in May after declines in March and April, even as quick-service traffic deteriorated and fast-casual growth slowed.
The firm notes that Mother's Day and a favorable calendar shift—May 2026 included five Sundays versus four a year earlier—likely supported sit-down operators. But the divergence between full-service and convenience-oriented formats also aligns with mounting evidence that consumers are becoming more selective about how and where they dine, prioritizing perceived value and experience over routine drive-thru stops.
Placer.ai points to elevated fuel costs as one factor weighing on drive-thru and pickup behavior, as consumers think twice about incremental car trips for a quick meal. At the same time, the firm suggests that customers may be placing greater emphasis on the dining-out experience than on the convenience of grabbing food on the go.
For restaurant landlords and investors, that dynamic complicates the long-running thesis that drive-thru lanes and car-centric configurations are the safest way to capture traffic, particularly in trade areas where inflation and tighter household budgets are already forcing trade-offs in discretionary spending.
Quick-service and fast-casual brands that once leaned on drive-thru and takeout to offset in-store volatility now face a more complex demand picture, where even budget-conscious customers are cutting some on-the-go visits while preserving a subset of sit-down occasions.
That shift has implications for the relative performance of centers and pad sites that skew heavily toward drive-thru dependent chains versus locations that can capture both experiential and convenience traffic.
Still, Placer.ai's report underscores that restaurant spending has not collapsed. The resilience of full-service dining, combined with the onset of the summer travel season and signs that fuel prices may be moderating, could provide a tailwind for traffic patterns in drive-thru and other convenience channels later this year, the firm said.
For CRE investors, the current data suggest a need to underwrite more carefully around visit composition and channel exposure—particularly at assets where rent rolls are concentrated in highly convenience-dependent concepts—and to watch closely whether the recent softening in drive-thru holds or proves to be a temporary pause.
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