Trends · data through September 2026

Family Restaurants & Diners in Illinois

Iceflower tracks 365 stores from 196 family restaurants & diners in Illinois. Maid-Rite grew fastest over the last year, ahead of Waffle House and Country 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
196
Tracked stores
365
Consumer panel
130M+

Growth ranking

Fastest-growing tracked family restaurants & diners

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. Maid-Rite and Waffle House sit in the high-growth half.

# Chain YoY growth
RankChainRank movementYoY growth
1 M Maid-Rite logo Maid-Rite - +19.8%
2 W Waffle House logo Waffle House ▲2 +12.0%
3 C Country Kitchen logo Country Kitchen ▲1 +6.3%
4 W Whistle Stop Cafe ▲3 +2.9%
5 C Cracker Barrel Old Country Store logo Cracker Barrel Old Country Store ▲1 -0.7%
6 B Bakers Square - -1.3%
7 I IHOP logo IHOP - -5.6%
8 D Denny's logo Denny's ▼1 -8.3%
9 S Sunrise Family Restaurant ▼1 -14.6%
10 B Bob Evans logo Bob Evans - -15.1%
11 H Huddle House logo Huddle House ▼1 -31.4%
12 P Perkins American Food Co. logo Perkins American Food Co. ▼1 -39.6%
13 C Country House Restaurant ▼3 -48.4%
  • Cracker Barrel Old Country Store
  • Denny's
  • IHOP
  • Soul Vibez
  • Cozy Corner
  • Bob Evans
  • Jordyn's Soul Cafe
  • Other tracked chains

Store footprint

Store map

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

  • Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (22)
  • Denny's (45)
  • IHOP (46)
  • Soul Vibez (2)
  • Cozy Corner (1)
  • Bob Evans (12)
  • Jordyn's Soul Cafe (1)
  • Other tracked chains

Top tracked chains by store count

More trends

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