Monthly Summary: U.S. New Restaurant Activity January 2024 – May 2025

Every week, Restaurantdata.com staff sorts, sifts, duplicate-checks, and verifies each new restaurant location across the U.S. The data below covers 65 weeks of new restaurant opening activity from January 2024 through May 1, 2025, sourced from five legal filing categories: alcohol license applications, building permits, DBAs (Doing Business As), fictitious name registrations, and state incorporations.

📊 New openings never stop. Restaurantdata.com scours hundreds of weekly legal filing sources and issues fresh verified sales leads every week. Total Net Issued reflects verified openings after removal of duplicates and unconfirmed locations. Total Raw is the aggregate count of all filings before vetting.

What the Trend Data Shows

Across the 65-week period, weekly Total Raw filings ranged from a low of 425 (January 11, 2024) to a high of 2,166 (April 18, 2024). Net verified openings have generally held in the 400–700 range per week, with the strongest activity concentrated in spring and early summer months. The seasonal dip in late December and early January is consistent across both years in the dataset.

Incs & LLCs consistently represent the largest share of raw filing volume each week, reflecting the high rate of new business entity formation among independent restaurant operators. DBAs are the second largest source, with alcohol and permit filings providing a smaller but highly reliable signal of imminent openings.

The net-to-raw ratio typically runs 35–50%, reflecting the significant vetting and de-duplication work Restaurantdata.com applies before leads are issued to clients each week. See also: Second Half 2024 vs. First Half 2025 Comparison →

Weekly Opening Counts — January 2024 Through May 2025

Source: Restaurantdata.com · Legal filing analysis · U.S. markets · January 11, 2024 – May 1, 2025 · 65 weeks

* Total Net Issued reflects verified new restaurant openings after removal of duplicates and unconfirmed locations. Week of 4/18/2024 highlighted in bold as the period peak at 2,166 raw and 870 net. Seasonal dips visible around late December / early January are consistent across both years.