Unit Growth reflects how a Concept’s verified unit count has changed over the past six months. This metric provides essential insight into whether a brand is expanding, stable, or contracting—key factors for sales, marketing, and RevOps teams assessing account potential.

Calculation methodology

• Unit Growth compares the current month’s verified unit count with the count from six (6) months prior.
• Growth is calculated as a percentage change (Δ), which can be positive or negative.
• A minimum of six previously verified monthly counts is required before growth can be calculated.

Growth categories:

• Rapid Growth: Growth exceeds a sliding-scale percentage determined by the brand’s market segment.
• Positive Growth: Unit count has increased but does not meet the threshold for rapid growth.
• No Growth: Unit count is unchanged.
• Negative Growth: Unit count has decreased.

Market segment scaling

Restaurantology applies sliding-scale growth thresholds based on market segment size. For example, a 10% increase for a large enterprise brand may be considered rapid growth, while the same rate for a smaller brand may be classified as positive growth.

Interpretation considerations

[01] Subjectivity of unit counts
Brands self-report unit counts via their public websites. Some may delay removing closed units or add locations only once fully operational. As a result, unit counts can reflect timing discrepancies.

[02] Frame of reference
A brand may show positive unit growth while also accumulating a notable number of closures. Relying solely on Unit Growth without also considering Historical Closures can lead to misinterpretations about brand health or trajectory.

[!TIP]
To account for both openings and closures, Restaurantology recommends using Inferred Status, which combines Unit Growth and Historical Closures into a single growth trend metric.

Additional information

While this article explains the methodology behind Unit Growth, instructions for applying growth filters can be found in Browse using an advanced search.

Next, continue to Historical closures →