How And Where Guests Talk About Price

Restaurateurs may wish it weren’t so, but price remains a primary concern for consumers in 2025.

In January, consumer prices rose to 3.0% year over year.

This is a 0.5% increase from December, which was the highest monthly increase since June.

And with a record high egg prices due to the Avian Flu and the looming possibility of tariffs?

You’ve got the potential for another year of higher than average price increases.

With this likelihood in mind, let’s look at how and where reviewers mention price in restaurant reviews.

Price Chatter by Segment

If we break down the percentage of online reviews that mention words relating to price by segment, we find something interesting. The percentage of price mentions is not a simple progression up or down the segment ladder.

In other words, lower check averages don’t necessarily mean better price sentiment.

Rather, it’s segments that have higher price points within their category (i.e.. Full Service or Limited Service) that have the most mentions of price. Moreover, in Fine Dining, 10.9% of their reviews mention price. In Fast Casual it is 8.6% and in Upscale Casual it is 8.2%.

Despite consumers’ pricing woes, surprisingly all segments had more positive mentions of price than negative.

Thus, we suspect this is in response to the aggressive initiatives by many restaurant brands.

At least, the ones offering a more attractive value proposition to their guests.

The segments with the higher price points within their category that have the largest positive to negative price review ratio.

Fast Casual is recording 3.8 positive price reviews for every negative.

Meanwhile, Fine Dining is at a 4.4 positive-to-negative ratio.

Conversely, the segments with lower price points within their category — especially Family Dining and Casual Dining — are getting the most complaints about price in restaurant reviews.

Price Sentiments and Trade Downs

Let’s look at these Guest Intelligence and Financial Intelligence segment statistics in conjunction.

1. 1. Upon analysis, we get a clearer picture of how segment price sentiment is affecting traffic.

Limited Service segments were the best performing in same-store traffic growth during 2024.

For Quick Service, there could simply be less chatter around price due to the experience.

Additionally, Quick Service brands are known for offering the most affordable prices. This means guests may be less compelled to include price in their reviews.

However, despite the lower frequency in overall price mentions, this segment obtained the 3rd highest ratio of positive-to-negative price mentions.

That was only behind Fast Casual and Fine Dining.

Fast Casual, on the other hand, was the best performer industry-wide in 2024 based on same-store traffic growth.

And the segment saw very positive sentiment around price.

Above all, this may be an indicator that they are strongly benefiting from trade-downs from the lower-priced Full Service segments.

Family Dining and Casual Dining may not seem as attractive in comparison.

We suspect this is due to being a more affordable option.

Patrons are happy to get a quality meal at those Fast Casual brands, usually at a lower price point, and also get to save by foregoing tips.

But let’s change gears and look at Fine Dining.

Reviewers are finding the experience worth it despite the higher prices.

Additionally, Upscale Casual guests are sharing positive reviews regarding price at almost twice the rate they leave a negative price review.

This leaves Casual Dining and Family Dining in the unfortunate position.

We suspect they are not benefiting from many upscale dining trade-downs.

However, they are getting hit with negative sentiment around price increases.

In conclusion, guests are not very happy with what they are seeing in terms of prices from these two segments.

And again, the solution could likely be for them to trade down some of their dining occasions to those segments with stronger price sentiment.