Independent restaurants are under pressure from every direction. Food costs remain elevated. Labor is more expensive. Insurance, utilities, tariffs, and financing costs continue to squeeze already thin margins. Operators are adapting every day just to stay in business.
But there's another force making all of those challenges harder: consolidation across the food supply chain.
Our new report, The Aggregated Table: Food Consolidation and the Independent Restaurant, examines how decades of mergers and acquisitions have concentrated market power at every stage of the food system from processors and distributors to grocery retailers, and how that growing concentration leaves independent restaurants with fewer choices, less negotiating power, and higher costs.
This report looks at the structural changes reshaping the food economy and why they matter to independent restaurants, small farms, fisheries, craft producers, and the communities they support.
Independent restaurants don't exist in isolation. They create markets for local farmers, ranchers, fishers, brewers, and specialty producers. They employ millions of Americans, generate economic activity that stays in their communities, and help define the places where we live, work, and travel. When competition disappears from the food supply chain, the consequences extend well beyond restaurant kitchens.
Whether you're a restaurant operator, policymaker, supplier, or simply someone who believes independent businesses matter, The Aggregated Table offers an evidence-based look at one of the most important—and least discussed—issues facing the American food economy.