Chili's
U.S. · 1,209 locations

Because roughly 80% of Chili's domestic units are company-owned, location decisions (openings, closures, remodels) are made centrally by Brinker International, meaning the footprint reflects a single corporate real estate strategy rather than hundreds of independent franchisee decisions. This makes the data especially useful for predicting closure patterns or expansion corridors — Brinker has systematically exited low-traffic trade areas since 2017. If you need a side-by-side overlay with Applebee's franchised footprint to identify markets where only one brand remains, LocationLists can run that overlap analysis as a custom project.

Chili's reversed its multi-year traffic decline in late 2023, posting positive same-store sales growth through value-driven menu engineering and social media virality. This means the current 1,209-location footprint is more stable than it was during the 2018–2022 contraction period when Brinker closed roughly 400 underperforming units. However, the locations that survived that culling are concentrated in higher-traffic suburban corridors — cross-referencing this dataset with traffic count data will help you identify which remaining units sit in genuinely strong trade areas versus ones still at risk.

With 1,209 locations, Chili's has roughly 25–30% fewer domestic units than Applebee's (~1,600) but significantly more than chains like TGI Friday's (~250 after its recent contraction) or Red Robin (~500). The more revealing comparison may be against fast-casual brands like Chipotle (~3,500 units), which now outnumber Chili's nearly 3:1 and increasingly compete for the same lunch occasion. LocationLists can build a custom density-ratio report comparing Chili's per-capita coverage against any fast-casual brand in our catalog, market by market.

Yes — every record includes latitude and longitude coordinates, which you can feed directly into route optimization software. Because Chili's company-owned model means a single purchasing relationship with Brinker's corporate supply chain team (primarily through their existing Sysco partnership), this data is especially useful for competing distributors mapping which Chili's clusters might be targetable if Brinker renegotiates contracts. The geographic coordinates let you calculate drive-time radiuses from your existing distribution centers.

Absolutely — this is one of the highest-value use cases. Brinker closed roughly 400 U.S. Chili's locations between 2017 and 2022, leaving significant gaps in markets like rural Texas, parts of the Midwest, and secondary Southern metros. By comparing this current 1,209-location dataset against historical location lists (which LocationLists can source as a custom engagement), you can identify specific trade areas where Chili's exited but population growth or competitive exits have since improved the demand picture — valuable intel for franchise developers or competing casual dining brands evaluating those same sites.

The 1,209-location footprint is a post-rationalization baseline — Brinker already made the painful closures, so what remains is a leaner, higher-AUV portfolio. You can use this data to calculate unit-level trade area overlap with the target brand, identify markets where Chili's presence creates competitive pressure, and map co-tenancy patterns with retail anchors like Target (2,034+ locations in our catalog) or grocery chains. For a full competitive landscape overlay — Chili's vs. Applebee's vs. your target — LocationLists offers custom multi-brand overlap reports with market-level scoring.