Wingstop’s same-store sales drop 5.6% as chain normalizes after record two-year growth

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Wingstop Inc. reported a 5.6% drop in U.S. same-store sales for the third quarter of 2025 as the company laps a record-breaking period of robust growth from the past two years. 

The same-store sales declines were steeper than expected, executives said during the third-quarter earnings call Tuesday, though CEO Michael Skipworth said he expects the downturn to be temporary.

“We shared earlier this year that certain regional pockets which over-index to Hispanic and low-income consumers were experiencing some softness in sales,” he said. “As we lap two consecutive years of industry-leading same-store sales growth, we saw this dynamic broaden across the industry and within our business to more geographies, as well as to the middle-income consumer in some areas.”

Skipworth added that he believes the current challenging consumer environment is cyclical, and that Wingstop will focus on the brand’s long-term growth opportunity, such as scaling to 10,000 restaurants globally. 

Currently, Wingstop operates just under 3,000 restaurants portfolio-wide, with the company opening locations at the pace of one per day. As a result, the company is updating its fiscal 2025 guidance from 475 to 485 net new restaurants.

Despite optimism on the growth front, particularly in new international markets like India, Wingstop is also updating its guidance to a more cautious outlook of 3 to 4% same-store sales declines for the year due to “broader softening of the macro environment.”

“We obviously acknowledge that there’s some near-term choppiness in the business and in the overall industry,” Skipworth said. “The industry saw a change in the consumer trends, and we’re not immune to that. … We expect that trend to continue in Q4, but we see it stabilizing [after] the fourth quarter.”

As Wingstop looks to the future following this period of consumer headwinds, the company is shifting focus to the wealthier customer cohort of $75,000 household income or higher.  

“This puts us in a unique position to not feel like we have to solve for the near-term but really stay focused on the investments we’re making to position the brand for this next phase of growth,” Skipworth said. 

For the third quarter ended Sept. 27, Wingstop’s net income increased 10.7% to $28.5 million or $1.02 earnings per share, up from $25.7 million or 88 cents per share for the third quarter of 2024. Total revenue increased 8.1% to $175.7 million.