• by Teresa Buyikian , May 28, 2026

Customers are increasingly using AI for restaurant suggestions. However, a new study has found the majority of QSR locations are “effectively absent” from AI-generated suggestions.

"The Fast Food, Faster Discovery: 2026 GEO Playbook for Multi-Location QSRs" report, published by location marketing tech company Uberall, found that a whopping 83% of restaurant locations are “entirely invisible” in AI-generated recommendations.

For example, if a customer asks ChatGPT  “where can I get a good pizza near me tonight,” only 17% of restaurants ever appear in the response, even when 86% of those same restaurants maintain “some presence” on Google.

“AI now decides which restaurants get discovered, and most QSR brands aren’t structured for the signals AI relies on. The gap between average and best-in-class is wide enough to represent a real competitive advantage,” said Stephanie Genin, CMO at Uberall, in a release.

Reviews figure prominently in AI search results, with ChatGPT primarily recommending businesses averaging 4.3 stars, Perplexity 4.1+ and Gemini 3.9+. And while a restaurant with a 4.0 rating will still rank in Google search results,  it may fall below the threshold AI platforms currently use to recommend.

AI queries also typically only result in three to five recommendations so when searching, for example, a Mexican restaurant in a market where there are 20+ such options, only the top performers will even show up in the AI suggestions.

The report also looked at the type of AI prompts used by consumers when searching out restaurant options. “Informational and comparative” questions, such as “what’s the healthiest breakfast I can grab on the go?” or “which coffee chain has the best mobile rewards program?” were found to “drive nearly 79% of AI-generated restaurant responses.”

"The Fast Food, Faster Discovery: 2026 GEO Playbook for Multi-Location QSRs" report was compiled from Uberall’s proprietary GEO Studio benchmark data along with aggregated performance metrics from its global QSR customer base.