Trends · data through September 2026

Chinese in Illinois

Iceflower tracks 856 stores from 499 Chinese chains in Illinois. China Star grew fastest over the last year, ahead of Happy Wok and China Kitchen.

Rankings come from real card and bank transactions across a panel of 130M+ US and EU consumers. We publish relative growth and rankings, never revenue figures. About the data

Tracked chains
499
Tracked stores
856
Consumer panel
130M+

Growth ranking

Fastest-growing tracked Chinese chains

Ranked by year-over-year growth of share of tracked local spend. Arrows show movement in the rankings since last year. Each dot in the chart is one tracked chain: bigger market position to the right, faster growth higher up, more tracked stores in a bigger dot. Colors match the store map below. China Star and Happy Wok sit in the high-growth half.

# Chain YoY growth
RankChainRank movementYoY growth
1 C China Star ▲2 +18.4%
2 H Happy Wok ▲1 +14.0%
3 C China Kitchen ▲1 +13.8%
4 G Great Wall ▲1 +7.8%
5 S Spring Garden ▲1 +7.1%
6 G Golden Dragon ▲1 +6.5%
7 M MingHin Cuisine - +4.8%
8 C China Express ▼1 +4.7%
9 Y Yu's Mandarin ▼1 +2.2%
10 P Panda Express logo Panda Express - +1.6%
11 C China Garden ▼1 +1.1%
12 C China King ▲3 -0.6%
13 C China Chef ▼1 -0.6%
14 C China Wok - -1.2%
15 S See Thru Chinese Kitchen ▼1 -2.1%
  • Panda Express
  • MingHin Cuisine
  • Manchu Wok
  • China Wok
  • New Star
  • Great Wall
  • See Thru Chinese Kitchen
  • Other tracked chains

Store footprint

Store map

856 tracked store locations in Illinois. The 7 largest tracked chains are highlighted.

  • Panda Express (134)
  • MingHin Cuisine (3)
  • Manchu Wok (1)
  • China Wok (20)
  • New Star (1)
  • Great Wall (9)
  • See Thru Chinese Kitchen (6)
  • Other tracked chains

Top tracked chains by store count

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