The 20 best chain restaurants in America

From Cracker Barrel to P.F. Chang's, there's little that brings the nation together like a love for the restaurants that span the US. At the same time, not much is more divisive than the question of what chain comes out on top.

To answer the question once and for all, Business Insider teamed up with Restaurant Business, a food-service industry expert and media outlet, to compile a ranking of the best sit-down restaurant chains in the US. Using proprietary data collected by Restaurant Business and its sister research firm Technomic, we looked at 90 of the largest sit-down US chains and rated them on three criteria: financial performance as demonstrated by sales, customer satisfaction, and overall value.

Our calculations accounted for sales growth, average sales at each location, consumer-sentiment ratings, and the average cost of a meal, along with other metrics.

The results revealed the dominance of some American classics, such as Cracker Barrel and Olive Garden. However, there are also some lesser-known upstarts, like Abuelo's and First Watch, that are taking on industry giants and quickly establishing themselves as some of the best chains in the country.

Here are the top 20 best chain restaurants in the US.

Emmie Martin, Tanza Loudenback, and Kaitlyn Yarborough contributed reporting to an earlier version of this article.