When you walk into a chain restaurant, time stands still. For some young people, that’s the whole point.

Ana Babic Rosario, a professor of marketing at the University of Denver, calls this “emotional time travel.”

With the country in an unstable economic time, potentially edging toward recession, those memories become more potent, Babic Rosario said. “We tend to crave some of those nostalgic moments because we think they’re more stable,” she said. “That’s how our mind tends to remember the past — more rosy than it really was.”

That’s true for Bea Benares, 27, who said she looked forward to meals at Outback Steakhouse and “eating the bread and sitting down with my family.”

“Now with fast causal, you may not sit down, and you go your separate ways afterward,” Benares said, referring to eateries catering to office workers, like Sweetgreen and Cava. “It sounds kind of funny, but you lose a sense of community. It’s kind of sad.”

That missing sense of community may be why 10,000, mostly in their 20s, traveled to Randall’s Island in New York last fall to attend Chain Fest, a food festival started by “Office” actor B.J. Novak that served “exclusive gourmet versions” of classic chain restaurant dishes from Red Robin, Cracker Barrel and others. The fest’s Los Angeles version had a 25,000-person waitlist.

For many chain restaurants, a new generation’s interest is an exciting opportunity. The big question is whether they can count on Gen Z beyond flashy events and viral moments. Catering to younger diners, some of whom say they want more updated food options, is a financial gamble that can alienate chain restaurants’ core customers — baby boomers, who want consistency.

Gen Z made up only 17% of patrons at sit-down, midprice casual dining establishments in 2024, and millennials made up 32%, according to Datassential, a market research firm. Baby boomers and Gen X make up a majority of the customer base.

Some brands that have leaned into the cultural revival have fared well. Chili’s, for example, whose cachet peaked in the 1990s for many with its “Baby Back Ribs” jingle, saw its sales jump more than 31% in its latest quarter from a year earlier. Viral videos of people dipping and pulling long stringy mozzarella sticks helped to boost sales. Last month, the chain featured ’90s star Tiffani Thiessen of “Saved by the Bell” fame in its ads for $6 margarita specials.

Kevin Hochman, CEO of Brinker International, the parent company of Chili’s, told analysts on an earnings call this year that a “new generation” of diners was discovering the brand and “putting Chili’s back in culture again.”

Rainforest Cafe, a tropical-themed chain popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is also seeing some benefits in younger diners’ interest. Earl Milczark, the chain’s regional vice president, said more 25- to 35-year-olds who visited the chain as children wanted to “revisit their experience” with their children and friends. The chain’s pop-up at the Empire State Building in October brought in some 32,000 people for such dishes as Anaconda Pasta and Treetop Filet.

Last fall, Red Lobster resurrected hush puppies after a backlash on social media from young people when the restaurant took them off the menu. But the restaurant chain, which filed for bankruptcy last year, has to tread lightly with changes because older diners “make up a significant portion of our customer base,” said Damola Adamolekun, the company’s CEO.