Moms prefer Mother’s Day dining out over breakfast in bed
Breakfast in bed barely registers: 42% of moms want a family meal out, while only 4% want the tray-and-toast ritual.
OpenTable’s Mother’s Day research found that 42% of moms prefer going out to eat with family, while only 4% want breakfast in bed. Moms and mom figures ranked messiness as the biggest downside, followed by the cleanup afterward. For 62% of Americans, dining out is now an important part of the holiday.
OpenTable’s April 21, 2026 release was based on an online survey from Ripple Research of 1,500 U.S. consumers celebrating Mother’s Day, including 669 mothers and mother figures. Thirty-eight percent of Americans planned to celebrate with multiple generations, and reservations for parties of 6 or more rose 13% on Mother’s Day in 2025 from the year before. Just 18% of moms and mom figures said they booked their own Mother’s Day meal in 2026, down from 39% the year before.
Cheryl Paniagua, OpenTable’s vice president of restaurant sales and services, said dining out is the gift moms want most this Mother’s Day, and that timing matters because most reservations are made more than a week in advance. OpenTable’s 2026 Top 100 Brunch Restaurants list was built from more than 10 million diner reviews, ratings and reservation demand, with California leading the list with 19 restaurants and New York with 12.
Restaurants have every reason to treat Mother’s Day like a heavyweight date on the calendar. The holiday was restaurants’ biggest day of the year in 2025, with traffic up 12% year over year. The National Restaurant Association projected 80 million American adults would dine out on Mother’s Day 2026, up from 75 million in 2025. Toast’s restaurant data showed Mother’s Day 2025 drove same-store gross merchandise value up 57% versus an average Sunday, reservations up 319%, check sizes up 32% and wine sales up 56%.
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