Alysse Merila
Grace Ashby
Retail and restaurant companies are refining their executive incentive programs as they navigate changing consumer behavior, margin pressures, and an uncertain operating environment. Rather than fundamentally redesigning their plans, companies are making targeted adjustments to better align executive pay with business performance and shareholder expectations.
Meridian’s 2026 Retail & Restaurants Incentive Trends Report examines incentive compensation practices across 105 retail and restaurant companies, highlighting emerging trends in annual and long-term incentive plan design, performance measures, equity award structures, and incentive payouts.
Key findings include:
• Annual incentive plans remain financially focused. Profitability continues to dominate, with companies increasingly emphasizing revenue growth and adjusting payout structures to reflect evolving business priorities.
• Long-term incentive designs are shifting. More companies are increasing the weighting of restricted stock units (RSUs) while refining the role of performance-based equity and relative total shareholder return (rTSR).
• Incentive payouts reflect a changing performance environment. Annual incentive payouts moved closer to target in 2025, while long-term incentive outcomes remained more challenging, reflecting the difficulty of achieving multi-year goals amid market volatility.
The findings offer compensation committees and management teams a valuable perspective on how industry peers are balancing performance, retention, and evolving business priorities.
Download the 2026 Retail & Restaurants Incentive Trends Report to explore the findings and benchmark your company’s incentive practices against current industry trends.