CHICAGO – The fast-casual restaurant industry is living up to its name by outpacing other restaurant industry segments, a new report from Technomic finds. According to Technomic’s Top 150 Fast-Casual Chain Restaurant Report, fast casual has captured 14% of the total $223 billion limited-service restaurant segment.

Fast-casual sales increased 13% in 2012, and the largest chains—those which each made more than $325 million last year—did even better, growing by 16%. Fast-casual restaurants continue to outperform both quick-service and full-service establishments and post strong gains even while the rest of the industry is having a more difficult time. 

“Fast casual has become a $31-billion segment since Chipotle began reinventing fast food 20 years ago,” said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, in a press release. “Consumers today want quality offerings made quickly. Segments like burger, sandwich and Mexican have done a great job delivering on quality, fresh, gourmet, and made-on-demand offerings. There are still areas of growth in the fast-casual segment for operators to adopt these ingredients for success and become viable in the fast-casual landscape.”

Looking forward, the trend is expected to continue. Whereas the compound annual growth rate for all limited-service restaurants is 4.5% (2012 through 2017), fast-casual operators are expected to grow 10%, on average, over the same period. 

Bakery cafés continued to lead all menu categories among the Top 150 fast-casual chains, with U.S. systemwide sales of $6.1 billion, up more than 10% over 2011. The Mexican and sandwich categories were second and third largest, with U.S. systemwide sales of $5.7 and $4.4 billion, respectively. The categories that saw the fastest sales growth were sandwich (up 17%) and Asian/noodle (up 16%). The burger and sandwich clusters experienced the highest unit growth, growing outlets by 14% and 13%, respectively.