Chicken Salad Chick tops YouGov’s 2026 U.S. emerging dining brands ranking

Chicken Salad Chick ranks first in YouGov’s 2026 U.S. emerging dining brands study, which examines the challenger, regional-to-national, international and specialty dining brands that are breaking through with American consumers. The ranking goes beyond awareness to measure how strongly brands are performing across five dimensions of consumer momentum, including Buzz, Consideration, Recommendation and perceptions of whether brands are Innovative and On the Rise.

Key findings include:

• Chicken Salad Chick leads the overall emerging dining ranking, finishing ahead of Cook Out, Just Salad, Nothing Bundt Cakes and KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot. The fast-casual chain outperforms the average of the other qualifying brands across all five measures used in the ranking.
• Nothing Bundt Cakes generates the strongest positive buzz, recording a Net Buzz score of 12.9. Jet’s Pizza follows at 10.8, with Chicken Salad Chick third at 10.3.
• Cook Out leads on purchase consideration: Nearly two-thirds (63.6%) of consumers who are aware of the Southern quick-service chain say they would consider purchasing from it. Golden Chick follows at 61.0%.
• Chicken Salad Chick and KPOT lead perceptions of momentum and innovation. More than half of consumers aware of Chicken Salad Chick (54.1%) say the brand is On the Rise, narrowly ahead of KPOT (53.6%). Chicken Salad Chick also ranks first on Innovation at 54.4%, followed closely by KPOT at 53.7%.
• Emerging brands can build momentum in different ways. KPOT and Just Salad perform strongly on both Innovation and On the Rise, while Cook Out combines strong perceived momentum with more moderate Innovation scores, indicating that perceived momentum can also be driven by factors beyond innovation.

“Awareness is only part of the story when it comes to building momentum for emerging restaurant brands. The brands breaking through are the ones turning that awareness into consideration and positive recommendation, while also giving consumers a sense that they’re bringing something distinctive to the market,” said Nora Hao, Senior Director at YouGov. “Chicken Salad Chick stands out for performing strongly across all three, while Cook Out, Just Salad and KPOT show that brands can build momentum in very different ways, whether through regional strength, strong word of mouth, innovation or through a distinctive dining experience.”

Methodology

YouGov’s 2026 U.S. emerging dining brands study was conducted July 15-August 2, 2026 among U.S. adults in a nationally representative survey. The study began with 70 emerging, challenger, regional-to-national, international and specialty dining brands. The 34 brands with national awareness above 10% advanced to the final ranking. The Emerging Momentum Score is an equal-weighted composite of five measures: Net Buzz, Consideration among aware consumers, Net Recommendation among current and former customers, On the Rise among aware consumers and Innovation among aware consumers. Each measure was indexed from 0 to 100 across the qualifying brands before being combined into the final score. Awareness was used only to qualify brands for the ranking and does not contribute to the final score.