Business is booming for Naperville’s restaurants – at least according to Christine Jeffries, president of the Naperville Development partnership. At the latest Liquor Commission meeting, she reported that revenue generated from drinking and eating exceeded half a billion dollars in 2022, up $60-million from the year before and up more than $168,000,000 from ten years ago. At the start of 2013, such sales were just above $335,000,000.
By the numbers
Here’s a look at total food and drink sales from 2013 to 2023:
2013: $335,231,126
2014: $342,022,902 Up 2%
2015: $343,377,757 Up .4%
2016: $384,397,785 Up 11.9%
2017: $404,768,054 Up 5.3%
2018: $411,554,982 Up 1.7%
2019: $431,000,653 Up 4.7%
2020: $330,679,289 Down 23.3%
2021: $443,711,287 Up 34.2%
2022: $504,211,640 Up 13.6%
Restaurant rebounding after pandemic
In the data listed above, you’ll see that the sales increased steadily each year, except for in 2020 where it went down quite a bit due to the COVID-19 pandemic pandemic but then proceeded to rebound in 2021, even exceeding pre-pandemic levels.
“So it is a very popular and very resilient industry here in Naperville,” said Jeffries.
The city has more than 350 restaurants, including fast food, sit down, fine dining, and family, with multiple cultures represented. Jeffries encourages people to try a restaurant you hadn’t before and the perfect time to do it is coming up with the tenth annual Naperville Restaurant Week. More info can be found on the Dine Naperville website.
If you have a story idea, we want to hear from you!
