MapLab: The Cities Where Chain Restaurants Dominate

Whether they’re boarded up, bustling or newly rebranded, restaurants are among the clearest symbols of the pandemic’s impact on urban economies. Nearly 17% of U.S. eateries shuttered permanently or long-term during the first year of Covid-19, according to the National Restaurant Association, and those closures were not borne equally. As customers turned to low-cost take-out, fast-food outposts like McDonald’s and Chipotle saw sales soar. Deep-pocketed dining chains like Texas Roadhouse are now moving into new markets as the economy recovers and indoor dining resumes. Independently owned restaurants, far more vulnerable to the financial stress of months with few customers, closed at higher rates.

What kind of landscape do those trends portend? A recent mapping project led by Clio Andris, assistant professor of city and regional planning and interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and planning graduate student Xiaofan Liang, gestures at the corporate dining terrain that already defines much of the country.