This story is a part of NRN’s International Top 25, an annual look at the 25 largest restaurant chains and companies based outside of the United States and Canada based on their worldwide foodservice sales. Sales and figures were calculated by London-based Euromonitor International.

As Nation’s Restaurant News introduces this year’s International Top 25, it is against a backdrop of a global foodservice market set to gain serious ground during the next five years, with sales expected to jump 32 percent to more than $3 trillion.

Through 2017, the Asia-Pacific region will be the hottest foodservice sales growth market in the world in terms of net increase in total sales volume, with Latin America a distant but still significant second, research from Euromonitor International found.

Foodservice sales are expected to rise by $414.6 billion, or 39.1 percent, to $1.5 trillion between the end of 2012 and 2017 in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Euromonitor. Economic conditions in Japan appear to have stabilized and continue to improve, and further growth will be fueled by emerging markets, including China and India, that are creating larger classes of consumers who can afford to dine out.

Latin America, meanwhile, is expected to add $175.3 billion in foodservice sales — an increase of 62.1 percent — during that same five-year period.

The anticipated levels of sales growth in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America markets are approximately seven times and three times, respectively, that forecast by Euromonitor for the U.S.-Canada region, where sales are expected to climb by $59.8 billion, or 11.6 percent, to $577.1 billion. Restaurant brands operating in the more mature U.S.-Canada region are expected to experience small to moderate annual incremental gains amid fierce competition for share of the existing market.

Though the Middle East-Africa and Eastern Europe regions are expected to lag the U.S.-Canada market in terms of change in net sales during the five years ending in 2017, at $43.9 billion and $27.6 billion, respectively, they will have better year-over-year percentage growth than their North American counterparts. The Middle East-Africa region is projected to see an increase of 58.2 percent in total foodservice sales by 2017, and Eastern Europe is expected to see a gain of 46.3 percent in the same period, according to Euromonitor.