For most restaurant marketers, success looks like a full dining room. Reservations booked out. Delivery orders stacking up. Foot traffic climbing week over week.
The problem is that volume might not be the profitability strategy that it used to be.
For one, volume is getting harder to achieve. More than 60% of operators reported traffic declines in 2025, and 40% of consumers said they're cutting back on how often they dine out, according to the National Restaurant Association's 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry report. And in a margin crisis — where 42% of operators were not profitable in 2025 and food costs have risen 35% since the pandemic — running discounts or other traffic-driving promotions becomes harder for restaurants to swallow.
Meanwhile, raising prices to make up the difference could turn more customers away. According to YouGov's 2025 US Dining Out Report, 69% of Americans dining out less said restaurant price increases were the reason why.
The good news is that there's a third path: Finding the customers you'll get the most value from.
A better metric for restaurant success in 2026
Dig deeper into the data, and you'll find that not all spending is down.
The K-shaped economy — where wealthier consumers continue to spend while lower-income consumers cut back — has hit the restaurant sector, too. A 2026 McKinsey analysis showed that higher-income diners were the least likely to reduce their restaurant spending, while lower- and middle-income consumers pulled back sharply. Younger generations are also more willing to spend on dining out.
Meanwhile, the same analysis shows that among US consumers who plan to reduce their restaurant spending, most intend to cut back on how much they spend per visit by seeking out more discounts, ordering fewer items, or opting for cheaper menu options.
This means the restaurants capturing spending aren't necessarily the ones with the most traffic — they're the ones reaching the customers who are still willing to open their wallets.
A restaurant primarily serving value-conscious customers is a fundamentally different business from one reaching customers who are adding appetizers, enjoying high-margin cocktails, and choosing premium menu items. The fixed costs to serve both customers are nearly identical — the same rent, the same labor, the same marketing investment. But the return on investment, and therefore the margin, is remarkably different.
That's why smart restaurant marketers focus on average order value (AOV), sometimes called average check size, which measures how much each customer spends per visit. Unlike traffic or visit volume, it captures not just how many customers a restaurant is reaching, but whether they are effectively reaching customers who are good for the bottom line.
How restaurant marketers can influence average order value
For restaurant marketers, this raises a practical question: Where can I find those high-value customers and influence how much they spend?
Where your customers are purchasing can make a difference in AOV. DoorDash research shows that online ordering encourages higher spend, with 60% of consumers saying they're likely to add impulse buys.
When you try to upsell, customers matter, too. Research from Revenue Management Solutions and the University of South Florida found that customers navigating online menus move through a distinct consideration phase — a window in which what they see, and how it's presented, shapes what they ultimately order. Their work suggests that this is the best time to pursue upcharges and influence AOV, while customers are actively browsing and building their order. When fewer customers are walking through the door, influencing the ones actively deciding what to order becomes even more critical.
But these tactics only go so far if the customers arriving at your menu are predisposed to spend as little as possible.
This is the insight behind DoorDash's newly launched Average Ticket Size Targeting, which lets restaurant advertisers reach customers based on their historical spending behavior on the platform. Unlike top-of-the-funnel awareness campaigns, it reaches customers the moment they're deciding where and what to eat.
In early tests, campaigns targeting "High Average Ticket Size" saw, on average, more than a 35% increase in average ticket size and achieved an average incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) of nearly 4x compared to untargeted campaigns.
The restaurants winning in 2026 aren't necessarily the busiest ones. Instead, they're the ones targeting the right customers at the right time to make every order count.
Learn more about how DoorDash is helping restaurant marketers rethink growth.
This post was created by Insider Studios with DoorDash Ads.
