Last year marked a new era of post-COVID recovery in the U.S., especially for the foodservice industry, according to Yelp’s annual Business Openings Report.

The crowd-sourced review platform analyzed new business listings and found the restaurant and nightlife industry surpassed pre-pandemic openings for the first time in 2023, a sign that some of the hardest-hit sectors have finally bounced back roughly four years after the global outbreak brought many service-based businesses to a grinding halt. 

The report found a substantial increase in openings for three key food and beverage subsectors. Yelp tracked 53,793 new restaurant openings in 2023, up 10 percent from 2022 and 2 percent from 2019. Nightlife business openings increased 11 percent year-over-year and 7 percent on a four-year stack. Openings for food businesses, a broad label encompassing everything from food trucks and juice bars to brewpubs and shaved ice stands, increased 16 percent from 2022 and 28 percent from 2019. 

“Even through economic challenges, restaurant owners continue to delight their diners, staying responsive to shifts in consumer preferences like the increasing demand for earlier reservation times and higher-end experiences, as Yelp data shows,” Cliff Cate, the company’s vice president and general manager of restaurants, said in a statement. “In 2024, we expect to see this positive momentum continue as the restaurant industry continues to meet the moment.”

Yelp also looked at the categories that drove the most growth for the restaurant industry as well as the top states and cities with the highest number of new openings. The biggest growth drivers were dessert-oriented and pop-up restaurants, both of which notched a 66 percent increase in openings versus 2022. Other key categories included creperies (up 63 percent), hot pot (up 53 percent), and pasta shops (up 48 percent). Mexican restaurants accounted for the most openings with 9,116 new listings on Yelp, followed by bars (6,863), sandwich restaurants (6,562), breakfast and brunch restaurants (5,939), and food trucks (5,297). 

California saw the largest number of openings with 8,694 new restaurant listings. Texas came in second with 5,449 openings, followed by Florida (4,674), New York (4,356), and Illinois (1,794). The metro areas with the largest number of new restaurant openings include New York City (4,739), Los Angeles (3,424), Miami (1,720), Houston (1,560), and Chicago (1,508). 

The restaurant industry’s return to growth helped make Yelp’s mid-2023 prediction a reality. The company last summer forecasted that entrepreneurs across all industries would break records and beat out 2022’s all-time high for new business openings. That momentum continued throughout the back half of the year. Every category on Yelp saw year-over-year gains in 2023, and all 50 states surpassed their 2019 levels. On a whole, nationwide new business openings increased 20 percent year-over-year.

Female entrepreneurs also started more new businesses than ever. Combining every state and every industry, the number of women-owned business openings increased 17 percent compared to 2022. With more than 58,000 openings last year, the women-owned identity attribute was the most prolific on Yelp for new business openings, according to the report. 

Diverse entrepreneurs made their mark in 2023, too. LGBTQ-owned (up 29 percent), Latinx-owned (up 28 percent), and Black-owned (up 24 percent) businesses all saw growth above the national average. Asian-owned businesses (up 16 percent) also saw significant business openings across the country. 

Looking at the leading cities for the growth of minority-owned businesses, Orlando, Denver, Austin, Miami, and Washington, D.C., emerged as the top five for at least two identity attributes. Los Angeles claimed the highest overall business openings for diverse entrepreneurs, securing the top position for women-, Latinx-, LGBTQ-, and Asian-owned businesses, while Atlanta and New York City saw the largest number of Black-owned business openings.