Among the retail brands, Costco took the No. 1 spot from last year's leader, H-E-B, which moved down to No. 2. In restaurants, In-N-Out held onto the top spot for the second consecutive year, followed by Texas Roadhouse at No. 2.
ChangeUp surveyed more than 6,500 consumers across 300+ brands, capturing more than 400,000 data points through large-scale survey research and AI-powered sentiment analysis of consumer reviews and online conversations. As it did in 2025, the brands were evaluated across eight key dimensions of experience: Memorability, Staleness, Return Intent, Unprompted Visit Desire, Advocacy, Novelty, Substitutability, and Relevance.
"Consumers are still willing to spend on experience, but as people become more selective, every trip now carries more expectation," said Lee Carpenter, CEO of ChangeUp. "They're taking fewer trips and asking more of the ones they make. The brands leading the rankings are giving people something that is harder to replace, along with a reason to make the trip, and a reason to remember it."
Across the Top 100 brands, the strongest perform across multiple dimensions, not just one. Costco, H-E-B and Fleet Feet score above the retail average on nearly every dimension. In restaurants, brands like In-N-Out, Chick-fil-A, Playa Bowls, and Texas Roadhouse turn distinctive elements into signature experiences that customers remember and talk about.
Inside the Report:
- The Top 100 Brands: The Top 50 retail and Top 50 restaurant brands, ranked separately against their respective competitive sets.
- The brands breaking through: Why businesses including Playa Bowls, Dutch Bros and Buc-ee's are creating enough pull to earn a trip, and how proven anchors like Costco, H-E-B and In-N-Out continue to hold top spots.
- Where experience is under pressure: How pickup, delivery and curbside are changing the role of the physical store, and what brands can do to make the visit worth choosing.
- What separates the leaders: The eight dimensions that measure how memorable, relevant and hard-to-replace an experience is, and how likely customers are to return and recommend it.
- Takeaways for every brand: How to protect your brand's strengths, repair what's quietly costing your business, and build something irreplaceable.
"What we're seeing in the data is that a brand can do everything it did last year and still lose ground because the experiences around it are getting better," said Carpenter. "Staying relevant requires more than protecting what already works. Brands have to keep finding ways to give people a reason to choose them."
Download ChangeUp's 2026 Experience Report: changeupinc.com/experience-report-2026/.
About ChangeUp
ChangeUp is an award-winning retail design and brand strategy agency designing for the moments where brands and customers meet. We develop brand-led experiences that create change for businesses through customer insights and strategy, brand design, store design, and architecture. We've partnered with clients including Chick-fil-A, Bath & Body Works, Kia, The Vitamin Shoppe, bp, and Panera Bread. Learn more at www.changeupinc.com.
SOURCE ChangeUp
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