As economic pressures prompt consumers to reassess the value of each restaurant visit, business dining continues to outperform, highlighting a widening gap between consumer fatigue and the segment’s reliability.
Dinova Inc.’s Spring 2026 State of Business Dining Report, which draws on proprietary data from millions of corporate cardholders, analyzes dining spend, traffic and where those dollars are flowing. With an estimated annual market size of $250 billion—about 23 percent of food-away-from-home spending—business dining has emerged as a key growth driver for restaurants navigating a bifurcated economy.
“The narrative around declining consumer purchasing power misses an important distinction,” Dinova President Alison Quinn said in a statement. “A sizable number of restaurant customers aren’t discretionary spenders at all. To the corporate diner with an expense account, a meal is an investment.”
In 2025, business dining spend, traffic and average check sizes outpaced the broader market. While travel disruptions and budget resets temporarily slowed momentum in early 2026, the segment rebounded; March sales rose eight point five percent year over year, and traffic increased five point three percent. Growth was supported by steady business travel, return-to-office trends and a resurgence in large conferences.
The report also identifies several shifts within the segment, including:
- Diverging performance by geographic market and industry sector.
- A redistribution of spend to secondary markets emerging as conference hubs.
- Weekday dining patterns tied to return-to-office behavior, revealing peak activity periods.
- Seventy-two percent of business dining spend flowing to independent and regional restaurant brands.
“The past few years have been defined by economic uncertainty, but our data has told a consistent story,” Quinn said. “Business diners spend more, visit more predictably, and their activity follows patterns that restaurants can plan around. For operators, the opportunity is not just recognizing that business dining exists—it is building a strategy to capture more of those meals.”