What Makes a Restaurant Successful? A Meta-Analysis of Restaurant Performance

Despite the economic and cultural importance of restaurants, research on restaurant performance remains fragmented and often yields conflicting conclusions. Much of this work also focuses on customers or employees rather than on restaurants themselves. To address these gaps, we conduct a meta-analysis of 37 studies encompassing 11,487 restaurants and more than 280,000 employees to identify the restaurant-level factors that best predict performance. Drawing on the Resource-Based View, we distinguish traditional customer-facing attributes (food, service, and ambiance) from internal organizational capabilities. Results indicate that both sets of predictors are positively related to restaurant performance, with service quality and innovation emerging as the strongest and most consistent predictors. Customer satisfaction shows only a moderate relationship with restaurant performance and partially mediates the effects of organizational capabilities, suggesting it should not be treated as a proxy for performance. Our findings not only identify gaps for future research but also offer practical guidance for restaurant managers and owners.