• by Teresa Buyikian , Yesterday

A new study on restaurant chain AI visibility found that despite fast casuals’ recent successes, QSRs still drive the majority of AI restaurant search results.

The U.S. Restaurants & Chains AI Visibility Index 2026 from AI communications firm 5W, ranked the top 25 U.S. restaurant chains by AI citation share, defined as “how often and how prominently each brand is referenced in AI-generated answers.” The report ranked queries on the top four AI platforms: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI.

McDonald’s emerged as the top result in AI searches across the board and was the “reference default in nearly every ‘best fast food’ and ‘best burger chain’ query.”

Starbucks came in second, indicating its “brand synonymity with ‘coffee chain’ is the deepest single-category citation moat in the industry.”

Chick-fil-A came in third place, where it was cited as reference standard for both "best chicken chain" and "best fast food customer service."

Fast casuals make their first appearance on the list with Chipotle coming in fourth place, with the chain owning the search results for “best fast-casual” and “best burrito.” Cava follows behind Chipotle, owning “best healthy fast food” AI search results.

“Restaurant marketing has been a local-search-and-loyalty-app business for fifteen years,” said Ronn Torossian, founder and chairman of 5W, in a release. “AI citation is the third pillar — and almost nobody is measuring it yet. The chains that build it first will rewrite the unit economics of the category. The ones that wait will pay tuition to the ones that didn't.”

Following behind Cava, slots 5-14 were taken up by QSRs with Subway (6), Taco Bell (7), Wendy’s (8), Domino’s (9), Burger King (10), Dunkin’ (11), Raising Cane’s (12), Pizza Hut (13) and Wingstop (14). Fast casuals made a return with Panera at 15, followed by the first full-service restaurant on the list with Olive Garden coming in at 16. Texas Roadhouse was next at 17, followed by Shake Shack (18), Sweetgreen (19), Jersey Mike’s (20) Dutch Bros (21), Popeye’s (22), Buffalo Wild Wings (23), Outback Steakhouse (24) and 7 Brew (25).

The study gathers data from over 90 consumer-intent queries in 12 sub-categories, which included best fast food, best burger, best chicken, best coffee, best pizza and best Mexican.