Resy Releases 2024 Resy Retrospective: The Year in Dining and What’s in Store for 2025

1. Here for the Vibes

According to a recent survey of 1,000 Americans who dine out, 1 in 4 survey respondents said a restaurant’s “overall vibe” was the top factor for them when choosing a restaurant. Some diners are going for vibes only, with 23% of respondents going to cocktail or wine bars “just for the vibes,” even though they drink very little.

2. Dining Out > Dating Apps

People continue to crave in-person connection, and restaurants are a prime place for connecting: 69% of respondents say they’ve made new connections at a restaurant and 1 in 5 have even exchanged numbers.

3. Solo Dining = Self Care

Resy data² shows solo dining continues to rise in top dining cities across the U.S.: Miami is up 14%, Chicago is up 12%, and NYC is up 6%.

4. Dinner and Yap

2024 gave us “yappers,” Gen Z’s favorite new term for that friend who likes to chat… a lot. According to the 81% of survey respondents who consider themselves “yappers” (at least sometimes), four characteristics stood out as qualities that make a restaurant ideal for yapping: staff with good vibes (66%), a good happy hour deal (64%), an atmosphere that isn’t too loud (61%), and booth seating (60%).

5. From Music City to Restaurant City

Nashville, Tennessee was named the most underrated food city in the United States.

6. Will Travel for Restaurants

67% of respondents said they’re likely to travel to a new U.S. city to check out the dining scene, proving how cities’ culinary chops have become a driving force for diners’ travel decisions.

7. Make Sunday the New Saturday

Resy data shows that setting a Notify for a Sunday offers the best chance of securing a table, as the day of the week that sees the highest percentage of Notifies set convert to reservations. Your Notify is 19% more likely to convert on a Sunday than on a Saturday³.

8. Regular Status Reigns

There’s no joy for a restaurant-lover quite like becoming a regular – and restaurants depend on regulars to help keep their business afloat. According to Resy data⁴, these are the most re-booked restaurants in five popular dining cities:

• New York City: Balthazar, Cafe Chelsea, L’Artusi, Pastis, Thai Diner
• Los Angeles: Avra Beverly Hills, Great White Melrose, Great White Venice, Jon & Vinny’s Brentwood, Mother Wolf
• Washington, D.C.: L’Ardente, Le Diplomate, Pastis DC
• Chicago: Armitage Alehouse, Bavette’s, Gilt Bar, Monteverde Restaurant & Pastificio, Trivoli Tavern
• Miami: Carbone Miami, COTE Miami, Joe’s Stone Crab, Mandolin Aegean Bistro Miami, Pastis Wynwood

9. Diners Keep Dining

Resy enabled over 350 million diners seated⁵ between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024, grew to 50 million users, and saw the 600 millionth reservation booked⁶ since its start 10 years ago.

10. Heating Up

Resy’s editors predict these dining trends will pop up on more menus in 2025:

• Omakase, still rolling: The counters keep opening, and now the trend is expanding to new iterations: “affordable” omakase and speakeasy omakase concepts.
• The return of the pub burger, or any burger really. A great burger never goes out of style.
• Snack-tails: Cocktails whose garnish is so good it’s like a snack with your cocktail. Or is it a cocktail with your snack?
• Seafood, especially raw bars.
• Regional Chinese cuisines: Just as regional Italian cuisines got more of a spotlight in recent years, now we’re beginning to see that more with Chinese cuisine in America, and particularly a Cantonese comeback.
• Cabbage…is the new cauliflower, which was the new beets, which was the new brussels sprouts.
• Another classic cocktail gets a revamp: We may not be ready to declare the end of the Martini Era, but there’s a new hot cocktail on the horizon: 1 in 4 survey respondents¹ named the Amaretto Sour as their top prediction for “cocktail of the year” in 2025.
• N/A = Now Awesome! Any serious beverage program, especially cocktail-oriented ones, needs to have not only non-alcoholic options, but great non-alcoholic options. The days of lemonade or iced tea as the only non-alcoholic options are over.
• “Third culture” cuisine: 2024 saw a wave of “third culture cuisines” — a new generation of second and third generation Americans are running restaurant kitchens and imbuing their heritage in menus in wonderful new ways, cooking outside the confines of “traditional” and how past generations did it. It’s authentic to them, and delicious to us.

Download The 2024 Resy Retrospective as a PDF here.

ABOUT RESY

Resy is a digital dining platform that powers restaurants around the world and provides reservation booking for passionate diners.  With the powerful backing of American Express, Resy has created best-in-class software that elevates dining experiences and connects restaurants to a vast network of highly engaged diners. Resy is a destination for restaurant discovery, exclusive access, original content, and chef-driven culinary events. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resy app and at Resy.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

Kim VanderVoort

Kimberly.VanderVoort@aexp.com

[1] This scientific random sample of 1000 U.S. adults (age 18 and older) was surveyed between October 11, 2024 and October 16, 2024 by DKC Analytics. All respondents dine out frequently or at least some of the time, as confirmed by user self-confirmation. DKC Analytics conducted and analyzed this survey with a sample procured using the Pollfish survey delivery platform, which delivers online surveys globally through mobile apps and the mobile web along with the desktop web. No post-stratification has been applied to the results.

[2] Based on Resy data comparing the periods of January 1, 2023 – October 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024 – October 1, 2024.

[3] Based on the percentage of Notifies set that converted into reservations between January 1, 2024 and October 1, 2024.

[4] Based on restaurants with the highest number of unique users who made reservations at the same restaurant more than once between January 1, 2024 and October 1, 2024.

[5] Diners seated represents the number of individual diners seated at a restaurant using Resy’s table management operating system (Resy OS).   

[6] As of July 31, 2024.