Key findings
- San Francisco is the most independent large city in America: 88.9% of its 7,547 places to eat and drink are independent, and it has 81.1 independents for every 10,000 residents, the most of any city we ranked.
- The least independent cities are fast-growing suburbs. In Goodyear, AZ, just 35.6% of places are independent; Surprise, AZ is next at 37.4%.
- Subway and Starbucks are the most common chain in 407 of 506 cities (Subway in 204, Starbucks in 203).
- 2,175 “restaurants” on the map exist only on delivery apps.They are virtual brands cooked inside other restaurants' kitchens, found in 444 of the 506cities. Denny's alone runs three of them (Banda Burrito, The Meltdown, The Burger Den), with 958 listings.
- The Northeast eats local. New York (84.2%) and Pennsylvania (82.4%) lead the states; Kentucky (56.5%) and Alabama (56.7%) trail.
Find your city
The 25 most independent large cities
Cities with at least 100,000 residents and 200 places counted, ranked by the share of places that are independent.
| # | City | Independent share | Places counted | Most common chain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Francisco, CA | 88.9% | 7,547 | Starbucks |
| 2 | Paterson, NJ | 87.4% | 565 | Dunkin' |
| 3 | Rochester, NY | 86.8% | 1,015 | Dunkin' |
| 4 | Oakland, CA | 86.5% | 2,074 | Starbucks |
| 5 | Bridgeport, CT | 86.3% | 533 | Dunkin' |
| 6 | Berkeley, CA | 86.2% | 963 | Peet's Coffee |
| 7 | Buffalo, NY | 85.9% | 1,259 | Tim Hortons |
| 8 | New Haven, CT | 85.1% | 738 | Dunkin' |
| 9 | Portland, OR | 84.6% | 5,492 | Starbucks |
| 10 | Seattle, WA | 84.5% | 5,631 | Starbucks |
| 11 | New York, NY | 84.3% | 44,011 | Dunkin' |
| 12 | Miami, FL | 83.8% | 3,322 | Subway |
| 13 | New Orleans, LA | 83.8% | 2,839 | Subway |
| 14 | Richmond, CA | 83.6% | 280 | Subway |
| 15 | Albany, NY | 82.9% | 573 | Subway |
| 16 | Philadelphia, PA | 82.8% | 7,750 | Dunkin' |
| 17 | Providence, RI | 82.8% | 1,150 | Dunkin' |
| 18 | Baltimore, MD | 82.6% | 2,954 | Subway |
| 19 | Minneapolis, MN | 82.1% | 2,222 | Starbucks |
| 20 | Hollywood, FL | 82% | 829 | Subway |
| 21 | St. Louis, MO | 81.8% | 2,013 | Subway |
| 22 | Newark, NJ | 81.4% | 1,227 | Dunkin' |
| 23 | Pittsburgh, PA | 81.3% | 2,212 | Starbucks |
| 24 | Jersey City, NJ | 80.9% | 1,264 | Dunkin' |
| 25 | Hartford, CT | 80.6% | 608 | Dunkin' |
The 25 least independent large cities
| # | City | Independent share | Places counted | Most common chain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 332 | Goodyear, AZ | 35.6% | 292 | Starbucks |
| 331 | Surprise, AZ | 37.4% | 380 | Starbucks |
| 330 | Thornton, CO | 45% | 371 | Starbucks |
| 329 | West Jordan, UT | 45.8% | 277 | McDonald's |
| 328 | Olathe, KS | 45.8% | 406 | Subway |
| 327 | Rialto, CA | 46.2% | 279 | Subway |
| 326 | Palmdale, CA | 46.4% | 399 | Subway |
| 325 | Meridian, ID | 46.5% | 488 | Starbucks |
| 324 | Lee's Summit, MO | 47.1% | 382 | Subway |
| 323 | Mesquite, TX | 47.9% | 463 | Subway |
| 322 | Gilbert, AZ | 48.8% | 904 | Starbucks |
| 321 | North Las Vegas, NV | 48.8% | 643 | Subway |
| 320 | Independence, MO | 49.1% | 371 | Subway |
| 319 | Tuscaloosa, AL | 49.2% | 494 | Subway |
| 318 | Murfreesboro, TN | 49.2% | 764 | Subway |
| 317 | Victorville, CA | 49.9% | 381 | Starbucks |
| 316 | Fontana, CA | 50.2% | 474 | Starbucks |
| 315 | College Station, TX | 50.4% | 560 | Subway |
| 314 | Pearland, TX | 50.4% | 514 | Subway |
| 313 | Concord, NC | 51.1% | 487 | Subway |
| 312 | Fishers, IN | 51.2% | 361 | Starbucks |
| 311 | Nampa, ID | 51.3% | 357 | Subway |
| 310 | Overland Park, KS | 51.6% | 856 | Starbucks |
| 309 | Broken Arrow, OK | 51.7% | 393 | Starbucks |
| 308 | League City, TX | 51.9% | 345 | Starbucks |
Where independents are densest
Share alone can flatter small markets, so we also counted independents per 10,000 residents. This is the better measure of how much choice a local diner actually has.
| # | City | Independents per 10,000 | Places counted | Most common chain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Francisco, CA | 81.1 | 7,547 | Starbucks |
| 2 | Portland, OR | 73.1 | 5,492 | Starbucks |
| 3 | Berkeley, CA | 68.2 | 963 | Peet's Coffee |
| 4 | New Orleans, LA | 65.6 | 2,839 | Subway |
| 5 | Fort Lauderdale, FL | 62.6 | 1,547 | Starbucks |
| 6 | Seattle, WA | 60.9 | 5,631 | Starbucks |
| 7 | Boca Raton, FL | 60.2 | 809 | Subway |
| 8 | Charleston, SC | 59 | 1,197 | Starbucks |
| 9 | St. Louis, MO | 58.8 | 2,013 | Subway |
| 10 | Pittsburgh, PA | 58.5 | 2,212 | Starbucks |
| 11 | Atlanta, GA | 58 | 3,954 | Subway |
| 12 | Miami, FL | 57.2 | 3,322 | Subway |
| 13 | Washington, DC | 54.6 | 4,918 | Starbucks |
| 14 | Boulder, CO | 54.3 | 783 | Starbucks |
| 15 | Pasadena, CA | 53.3 | 988 | Starbucks |
States
States with at least 2,000 places counted across their large cities.
| State | Independent share | Places counted |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 84.2% | 48,506 |
| Pennsylvania | 82.4% | 11,816 |
| New Jersey | 82% | 4,238 |
| Connecticut | 80.9% | 4,051 |
| Maryland | 80.9% | 3,403 |
| Rhode Island | 78.7% | 2,176 |
| Oregon | 78.3% | 9,947 |
| District of Columbia | 78% | 4,918 |
| Massachusetts | 77.1% | 2,530 |
| Wisconsin | 76.6% | 5,286 |
| Washington | 75.2% | 14,671 |
| Illinois | 74.2% | 20,448 |
| Louisiana | 72.4% | 6,222 |
| Ohio | 72.2% | 10,285 |
| Minnesota | 71.2% | 5,429 |
| California | 70.8% | 101,896 |
| Florida | 70.6% | 32,245 |
| Michigan | 69.7% | 8,416 |
| Virginia | 67.6% | 8,433 |
| South Carolina | 67.3% | 3,635 |
| Georgia | 66.8% | 10,262 |
| Missouri | 66.7% | 7,162 |
| Iowa | 66.1% | 3,202 |
| Colorado | 65.5% | 14,146 |
| New Mexico | 64.4% | 3,736 |
| North Carolina | 63.8% | 15,949 |
| Texas | 63.6% | 73,812 |
| Tennessee | 63.2% | 11,682 |
| Indiana | 62.6% | 7,736 |
| Nebraska | 62.5% | 3,606 |
| Nevada | 61.7% | 6,395 |
| Utah | 61.6% | 4,733 |
| Arkansas | 61.2% | 3,268 |
| Oklahoma | 60.1% | 6,940 |
| Arizona | 59.6% | 18,794 |
| Kansas | 57.5% | 4,433 |
| Alabama | 56.7% | 5,398 |
| Kentucky | 56.5% | 3,045 |
The restaurants that only exist on delivery apps
Map data counts 2,175places that are not separate restaurants at all. They are virtual brands: menus created for delivery apps and cooked in an existing restaurant's kitchen, often a chain's. A diner scrolling a delivery app sees a burger shop or a wing joint; the food comes out of a Denny's, a Chili's or a Dickey's. We removed them from every count in this index.
| Virtual brand | Cooked by | Listings | Cities |
|---|---|---|---|
| It's Just Wings | Brinker International (Chili's) | 466 | 299 |
| Banda Burrito | Denny's | 428 | 230 |
| The Meltdown | Denny's | 340 | 183 |
| Pardon My Cheesesteak | Virtual Dining Concepts and Barstool Sports | 289 | 209 |
| The Burger Den | Denny's | 190 | 139 |
| MrBeast Burger | Virtual Dining Concepts | 178 | 127 |
| Wing Boss | Dickey's Barbecue Pit | 82 | 63 |
| Twisted Tenders | SPB Hospitality (Logan's Roadhouse, Old Chicago) | 70 | 55 |
| Trailer Birds | Dickey's Barbecue Pit | 54 | 44 |
| Big Deal Burger | Dickey's Barbecue Pit | 46 | 34 |
| Mariah's Cookies | Virtual Dining Concepts | 32 | 31 |
Most listings: Houston (92), Los Angeles (64), Dallas (41), New York (35), Phoenix (30). Brand operators are linked to industry coverage confirming each brand is delivery-only.
The biggest chains, by locations counted
- Subway: 7,945
- Starbucks: 7,653
- McDonald's: 5,159
- Dunkin': 2,929
- Taco Bell: 2,907
- Burger King: 2,565
- Wendy's: 2,291
- Pizza Hut: 2,031
- Domino's: 1,768
- Chipotle Mexican Grill: 1,736
Cuisine capitals
For each cuisine, the large city where it makes up the biggest share of places (at least 25 places of that kind).
| Cuisine | City | Places | Share of city |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pizza | Evansville, IN | 90 | 13.9% |
| Mexican | Brownsville, TX | 244 | 25.8% |
| Coffee shops | Spokane Valley, WA | 71 | 19.2% |
| Vietnamese | Garden Grove, CA | 146 | 17.6% |
| Indian | Sunnyvale, CA | 84 | 14% |
| Korean | Carrollton, TX | 45 | 6.6% |
| Bars | Green Bay, WI | 106 | 23.5% |
| Breweries | Bend, OR | 51 | 7.1% |
| Caribbean | Miramar, FL | 33 | 12.7% |
| Southern and soul food | New Orleans, LA | 275 | 9.7% |
| BBQ | Shreveport, LA | 34 | 4.1% |
| Bubble tea | Garden Grove, CA | 37 | 4.5% |
What it means for independent restaurants
Independents hold 69.9% of the places in this index but compete with chains that have national apps, loyalty programs and ad budgets. The gap that matters most is direct ordering: when a regular orders through a delivery marketplace, the restaurant pays a commission and the marketplace keeps the relationship. Servestack gives independents their own commission-free online ordering, loyalty and marketing, and Studio makes the menus and posts. See what the commission costs you with the commission savings calculator.
Methodology
- Places: restaurants, quick-service spots, cafes and coffee shops, bars and breweries from the Overture Maps Foundation places dataset (release 2026-09-23.1), which includes data from Meta, Microsoft and Foursquare. We kept places marked open with a confidence of 0.7 or higher, removed business-registry entries without a storefront name, removed duplicates at the same location, and counted only places inside each city's official boundary (US Census TIGER).
- Cities:every incorporated US city with 75,000 or more residents in the Census Bureau's 2024 population estimates (506 cities after excluding Greater Boston towns covered by our Boston guide and Urban Honolulu, which is not an incorporated city). Rankings use the 332 cities with at least 100,000 residents and 200 places counted.
- Independent vs chain: a place counts as a chain location if the data tags it with a brand, or if the same name appears in 25 or more of the 506 cities. Common independent names that repeat by coincidence (for example China Garden, Golden Dragon or Taste of India) are excluded from that rule. Food distributors, in-store supermarket bakeries and 11 verified delivery-only virtual brands (2,175 listings) are excluded entirely. Food counters inside convenience stores, such as Krispy Krunchy Chicken or Hunt Brothers Pizza, are real places to buy food and count as chain locations.
- Limits: map data under-counts some places and lags openings and closures. Small regional chains with fewer than 25 cities in the data count as independent, which favors independence in regions with many local chains. Treat small differences between cities as noise.
Use this data
Download the full city table as a CSV file. You are free to use, chart and republish it under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Please credit “Servestack Independent Restaurant Index 2026” and link to this page. Journalists can reach Antonio Kodheli at hello@servestack.ai for city-level breakdowns.
Published 2026-10-11. Place data © Overture Maps Foundation contributors.