Costco and In-N-Out Tops in Experience Ratings

Which retail and restaurant brands offer physical experiences that resonate most strongly with customers? Looking to answer that question is the “2026 Experience Report” from ChangeUp, a brand strategy and retail design agency.

To create its rankings, ChangeUp surveyed more than 6500 consumers across 300-plus 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 was the case in the first iteration of such rankings in 2025, the brands were evaluated across eight key dimensions of experience: memorability, staleness, return intent, unprompted visit desire, advocacy, novelty, substitutability and relevance.

Here are the Top 10 retail brands, according to the report:

1. Costco
2. H-E-B
3. Fleet Feet
4. Vuori
5. JD
6. Lush
7. Sam’s Club
8. Wegmans
9. Buc-ee’s
10. Publix

And here are the top 10 restaurant brands:

1. In-N-Out Burger
2. Texas Roadhouse
3. Playa & Bowls
4. Sweetgreen
5. Chick-fil-A
6. Chicken Salad Chick
7. Dutch Bros.
8. Culver’s
9. Cane’s
10. Cooper Hawk

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.

“Consumers are still willing to spend on experience, but as people become more selective, every trip now carries more expectation,” said ChangeUp CEO Lee Carpenter. “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.”

Click here to register to receive a copy of the full ChangeUp report.