A fast casual restaurant is a type of restaurant invented in the United States. It aims to fill the gap between fast food joints and more formal restaurants.
This type of restaurant does not offer full table service. It gives a higher quality of food than fast food places. The fast casual restaurants use fewer frozen or processed ingredients than a fast food restaurant.[1]
The promoters of this idea see it as fitting between fast food and what they call "casual dining". By 'casual dining' they mean chains like TGI Friday's and Applebee's in the U.S. and Harvester in the U.K.
The typical cost per meal in a fast casual is in the $8–$15 range.[2] Typical examples of fast casual restaurants in the U.S. are Chipotle Mexican Grill, Culvers, and Panera.[1]
These ambitious new chains make up only a sliver of the nation's $683 billion restaurant industry. But all are within its swiftest-growing segment, "fast-casual," a subset of fast food that includes places like Chipotle and Panera, whose offerings are marketed as a rung or two higher than those of Burger King or Taco Bell: fewer frozen and highly processed ingredients, more-comfortable seats, better coffee and (sometimes) healthier food.