What Restaurant Merch Is Really Worth on eBay

On eBay this fall, a current Waffle House uniform shirt sold for $8.99. A 1980s In-N-Out varsity jacket sold for $349.99. Same platform, same category, a 39x spread.

We wanted to know what drives that gap. So we pulled 7,720 sold listings across 22 restaurant brands, from McDonald's to Waffle House. Shirts, hats and jackets, all sold between August and October 2026.

The headline: a restaurant logo on its own is worth about $19. National giants and regional cult favorites end up in almost the same spot. What moves the price is time and scarcity.

How we pulled it

• Source: eBay US sold listings, pulled October 28, 2026. About 98% of the sales closed between August 1 and October 28.
• Searches: "[brand] shirt," "[brand] hat" and "[brand] jacket" for each of 22 brands, 11 national and 11 regional.
• Clean-up: The listing title had to name the brand. We tossed false matches like Culver Military Academy jackets and Chi Chi Rodriguez golf hats.
• Tags: "Vintage" means the title says vintage, VTG, or names a year or decade from the 1950s through the 1990s. "Crew gear" means the title says employee, uniform, crew, staff, manager or worker.

We set out to include defunct chains like Burger Chef, Howard Johnson's and Sambo's. They're out there, but too few sold in 90 days to say anything with a straight face.

Finding 1: The logo is worth about $19

The median national-brand item sold for $19.00. The median regional-brand item sold for $18.06. That's the whole gap.

We expected the cult brands to win. Waffle House, In-N-Out and Whataburger have some of the most devoted fans in American food. Their medians came in at $16.99, $17.63 and $19.16.

Fan devotion is real. On a resale tag, it rounds to zero.

The national brands win the top of the market. About 10.1% of national-brand items sold for $50 or more, against 7.4% for regional brands. McDonald's leads the pack at 17%. Sixty-plus years of uniforms, promos and NASCAR sponsorships gives collectors a lot more to chase. Most regional brands are selling this year's gear.

Finding 2: Time turns a uniform into an artifact

Current crew gear is the cheapest thing in the market. Employee shirts, polos and hats made up about a quarter of our sample, 2,038 items, at a median of $16. Every chain sheds uniforms with every round of turnover, and a lot of them end up on eBay.

Give that same uniform 30 years and the math flips. Vintage crew gear sold at a median of $29, about 80% more. A McDonald's Mac Tonight satin bomber went for $349.99. A 1980s In-N-Out varsity jacket matched it.

Brands with decades of retired logos and mascots gain the most. In-N-Out vintage nearly doubles its current gear. At Whataburger, Starbucks and Cracker Barrel, vintage sells for less. Our read: collectors haven't started chasing those brands' older eras yet.

Finding 3: Drops make the spikes

Items tagged as a collab or limited edition sold at a median of $29.27. Everything else sold at $18.75. That's a 56% bump for the word "limited."

The top of our sample reads like a list of marketing moments:

• Dunkin' DunKings set (track jacket, pants, bucket hat): $499
• OutKast x Waffle House bomber jacket: $360, days after the collab launched in Atlanta
• Taco Bell Y2K Time Capsule box with Ed Hardy hat and tee: $299
• KFC x Pokémon jacket: $268.88
• Post Malone x Raising Cane's crew hat: $135

The pattern goes back years. In 2022, a sealed case of 150 McDonald's Cactus Plant Flea Market toys sold on eBay for $2,400, about $16 a toy. In 2024, a full set of McDonald's Collector's Meal cups resold for $99 within days of launch.

One wild card: Cracker Barrel posted the highest median in our sample at $24.93. The driver was home decor. A 2026 stained-glass witch hat lamp flipped again and again for $270 to $289. Cracker Barrel already runs a retail business, and its resale market shows it.

The full board

All 22 brands, ranked by median sold price. The last column is the share of items that cleared $50, which is where collectors live.

Watch Chick-fil-A. It sold 709 items, second only to McDonald's, and only 1.8% cleared $50. Huge demand, almost no premium. Our read: plenty of gear and very little old stock, so nothing on the shelf feels rare.

What operators should take from this

The resale market is a free brand study. Nobody fills out a survey. People just decide what your logo is worth with their own money. Here's what it says.

1. Your history is an asset. Treat it like one. Vintage pieces beat current ones at most brands with real history. Pull the old logos, uniforms and promo art out of the storage unit. A throwback drop costs little and sells a story nobody else can copy.
2. Scarcity is a lever you control. Limited and collab items sold 56% higher. Every always-available tee you print lowers the value of the next one. Run fewer drops and make each one an event.
3. Make crew gear worth keeping. Today's uniforms are the cheapest thing in the market. Employee-only pieces tell a different story: a Dutch Bros employee-exclusive work jacket sold for $250. Anniversary jackets and milestone pins cost little and say "you belong here" to the people running your shifts.
4. Watch your aftermarket. A saved eBay search takes two minutes. It tells you which eras, items and moments your guests still care about. That's free input for your next menu throwback, your next collab and your next loyalty reward.
   
   

The $19 question

Every restaurant brand has a logo worth about $19 on the open market. The brands that beat that number gave people something more to buy: a decade, a moment, a piece nobody else could get.

That's a brand story at work. Popcorn GTM helps restaurant and restaurant tech brands find theirs and bring it to market. If your logo is doing all the heavy lifting, let's talk.

And stay tuned for the companion episode of Modern Solutions for Modern Restaurants, where I'll dig through the strangest listings we found.

-Paul

Sources

• eBay US sold listings, pulled October 28, 2026
• Atlanta News First: OutKast and Waffle House merch collaboration
• CNBC: McDonald's Cactus Plant Flea Market toys on eBay
• FOX 32 Chicago: McDonald's Collector's Meal cups on resale market