North America Social Media Benchmarks: Retail Food Q3 2026

What’s in this report

North America retail food social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram well ahead of Facebook for restaurant and coffee chains: the median retail food brand in North America earned 36 interactions per Instagram post in September, level with its 15-month high, against five on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 2.45% on Instagram, its highest level in 15 months, and up to 0.53% on Facebook. Reels led on Instagram, and Starbucks, Crumbl and Taco Bell collected the most Instagram interactions.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 1,497 Facebook pages and 709 Instagram profiles of retail food brands in North America, covering July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026. Retail food is Emplifi’s benchmark category for restaurant, coffee and bakery chains, from Starbucks and Crumbl to Taco Bell and Wendy’s.

User-generated content: what’s achievable

Brands using Emplifi’s UGC solution saw these average uplifts in Q3 2026:

• 11.49x conversion rate
• 4.84x repeat website visits
• 1.03x average order value

The figures come from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, averaged across 68 to 83 accounts per metric. That benchmark covers brands in every category and region, so it is not specific to retail food or to North America.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Interaction share by industry

Ecommerce takes 44.1% of Facebook brand interactions in North America, and alcohol leads Instagram with 23.8%. Retail food earns a smaller share of interactions than of posts on both platforms: 2.7% of Facebook interactions from 5.5% of posts, and 2.4% of Instagram interactions from 4.7% of posts.

Facebook interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

Instagram interaction distribution (Q3 2026):

The categories listed are those with the most interactions among the region’s most active publishers. Retail means general retailers. Others combines every remaining category, retail food included.

Platform landscape at a glance

The median retail food brand in North America has more followers on Instagram than on Facebook, about 19% more, and posts there more often: 39 times in the quarter against 29. Instagram collected more than 10 times the interactions.

Median post interactions

This metric follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so a handful of viral accounts can’t inflate it.

Instagram finished September at 36, level with its 15-month high, after a low of 29 in October 2025 and a climb since February 2026. Facebook fell from eight in July 2025 to four in July and August 2026, then edged up to five in September.

Relative median post interactions

Indexing each platform to its own 15-month peak makes the two easier to compare despite their different scales.

Instagram ended September 2026 at 100% of its peak, a level it also reached in June and July. Facebook ended at 63% of its July 2025 peak.

Median post impressions

Impressions count how often posts were displayed, whether or not anyone interacted. They measure visibility, not engagement.

Retail food Instagram posts were displayed about three times as often as Facebook posts in September. Impressions fell on both platforms over the period, in line with the wider market: between July 2025 and September 2026, the Instagram median for all brands in North America fell by about 60%, and the Facebook median roughly halved. Retail food impressions peaked at 4,032 on Instagram in September 2025 and at 440 on Facebook in July 2025, and both reached their lowest point of the period in September 2026.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 2.45%
• Facebook: up to 0.53%

Across the quarter’s three months, Instagram’s median ranged from 1.94% to 2.45% and Facebook’s from 0.34% to 0.53%, with both peaking in September. Instagram’s rate has more than tripled since its low of 0.68% in September 2025 and rose in 11 of the 12 months since. Facebook’s has stayed between 0.34% and 0.54% for 15 months.

From this quarter, Emplifi calculates engagement rate from impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data. These rates are therefore not comparable with the engagement rates in earlier quarterly reports.

Best-performing post types

Instagram: Reels led with a median of 52 interactions per post, well ahead of carousels at 32 and about twice single images at 25.

Facebook: Reels also led, with a median of 6.5, followed by status updates at five and links at four. Photos, still 61.6% of posts in September 2026, earned a median of two, level with Live Video.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels nearly doubled their share of retail food brands’ Facebook posts, from 17.6% in July 2025 to 32.7% in September 2026, their highest share in the period, while photos fell from 70.4% to 61.6%. On Instagram, single images fell from 49.0% of posts to 40.0%, while Reels rose from 35.2% to 39.8%, also their highest share, and carousels from 15.2% to 19.5%.

Top performing pages and profiles

Facebook: top pages by total interactions (Q3 2026):

Instagram: top profiles by total interactions (Q3 2026):

Starbucks led Instagram from 62 posts, with nearly twice Crumbl’s interactions. On Facebook, Baked by Melissa led, and Big Mama’s & Papa’s Pizzeria posted most often of the top three, with 216 posts.

Top posts this quarter

A Carl’s Jr. fan vote topped Instagram, and Starbucks took the next two places with short teaser Reels. On Facebook, a recipe Reel and a playful one-line photo led.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median retail food brand in North America. A free social media assessment shows where your own profiles sit against them, platform by platform.

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Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

This quarter’s data has no retail food-specific ad benchmark, so the paid figures below come from Emplifi’s North America ad accounts benchmark, which covers ad accounts in every industry in the region.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes 36.9% of the average North America ad budget, 22.3 percentage points ahead of Instagram Reels in second. Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and Instagram feed each take just under 15%.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

• Lowest CPC: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories
• Lowest CPM: Facebook feed, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels

North America is an expensive market, with CPMs above $10 on every top placement. Instagram Reels pairs a low CPM ($10.85) with the highest CPC, $2.94, almost five times Facebook feed’s $0.61, which matters for chains sending people to an ordering app or online menu.

Spend, CPC and CPM by placement (Q3 2026):

Click-through rate by placement

Both Facebook placements clear 1.8%: Facebook feed at 2.14% and Facebook Reels at 1.85%. The three Instagram placements sit between 0.67% and 0.81%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

Q3 2026 ad cost benchmarks, shown for September 2026 with the quarter’s monthly range:

North America’s CPM jumped from $5.15 in July to $7.10 in September, the highest level in 15 months and more than three times the all-brands benchmark’s $2.09. Its low was $4.82 in January 2026. North America’s CTR also hit a period high in September, 2.00%, up from 1.39% in July 2025.

The all-brands benchmark is Emplifi’s global series across all brands. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Treat these medians as a calibration point for restaurant, coffee and bakery chains in North America, not a ceiling. Pull your own median post interactions, impressions, engagement rate and post type mix for each platform, and set them against the September 2026 figures above.

On Instagram, Reels are the strongest format and still less than 40% of posts, so they are the first place to add volume. The quarter’s top Instagram posts, a Carl’s Jr. fan vote and two Starbucks teaser Reels with captions of a few words, show how far a simple prompt can go.

On Facebook, Reels also earn the most and photos the least, yet photos are still most of what retail food brands post. Testing more of that volume as Reels is the clearest place to start.

Methodology

This report is produced quarterly from Emplifi’s proprietary social media dataset, drawn from the platform used by more than 22,000 brands worldwide.

Data collection: Data is pulled once per quarter and reflects the state of Emplifi’s database at the start of the quarter following the period analyzed. It is not updated between releases.

Sample: 1,497 Facebook brand pages and 709 Instagram brand profiles of retail food brands in North America, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

Reporting period: Monthly metrics are reported for September 2026, the final month of the quarter, and trend commentary covers July 2025 through September 2026. The ads trend series also covers July 2025 through September 2026.

Minimum thresholds: Reports require a minimum of 50 Instagram profiles and 50 Facebook pages for a given region and industry combination. Interaction distribution data requires a minimum of 300 profiles. Ad benchmarks require a minimum of 200 active ad accounts from the region or industry.

Key definitions

• Interactions (Facebook): Sum of all reactions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sorry, Anger), comments and shares on brand-published posts. Care reactions are counted under Likes.
• Interactions (Instagram): Sum of likes, comments, saves, shares and reposts on brand-published posts. Saves, shares and reposts are counted from Q3 2026.
• Median post interactions: The middle-ranked page or profile when sorted by monthly post interactions. It represents typical performance rather than an average, so outliers don’t skew the figure.
• Relative median interactions: Median interactions indexed to the maximum value in the reporting period for each platform, expressed as a percentage. Useful for comparing direction across platforms at different absolute scales.
• Impressions: The number of times a post was displayed, whether or not anyone interacted with it. Reflects visibility rather than engagement.
• Engagement rate: Interactions divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. From Q3 2026 the rate is based on impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data, so it is not comparable with earlier quarters.
• Organic: Posts not paid to be promoted, detected using Emplifi’s internal algorithm with near-100% accuracy.
• CPC / CPM: Median cost per click and cost per thousand impressions across all available ad accounts, shown for the top five placements by relative spend.
• Relative spend: Normalized distribution (%) showing the average share of an account’s budget allocated to each placement.
• CTR: Median click-through rate for the top five placements by relative spend.

All costs are in USD. All figures are medians unless otherwise noted; UGC uplifts are averages. Data is first normalized at the profile or page level before aggregation.