Brinker International, Inc. 401(k): Fidelity, match 4% max
Brinker International 401(k) Savings Plan · EAT · CIK 703351
Fidelity Investments is the recordkeeper named on the Form 5500 filed for this plan, the company that keeps the account records. Where to log in, and what the filing says.
Maximum employer match, as a share of pay
4%
Brinker International, Inc. matches 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 3% of pay, then 50% of the next 2% of pay, for a maximum employer match of 4% of pay.
From the Form 11-K filed May 21, 2026 ↗, covering the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Page data last updated July 28, 2026, when the Form 5500 bulk data was last refreshed. Why filings lag
On this page: what the employer actually paid in · the formula, word for word · when the money becomes yours · who can join · who holds your account · what the plan reports to the DOL · how it compares · what to do next
What Brinker International puts in, and what the plan costs
What Brinker International put into the plan, per active participant
$289
Brinker International, Inc. put $289 into this plan for each of its 50,716 active participants in plan year 2024. This is the whole employer side of the plan: matching money, profit sharing, non-elective and safe-harbor contributions, and reallocated forfeitures. The Form 5500 does not separate them, so this is what the employer put in and not the match.
Brinker International put in less per active participant than 52% of plans with 5,000+ participants at hotels and restaurants. The middle plan in that group of 89 reported $323. Hotels and restaurants comes from business code 722511, which Brinker International entered on its own Form 5500. Sponsors pick that code themselves, so a code that does not describe what the employer does ranks the plan against the wrong companies.
What this figure cannot separate: how much Brinker International pays, and how much it puts in
This is dollars, not a rate. A Form 5500 carries no payroll, so the figure reflects both how much the employer puts in and how much the employer pays: two plans running the same formula report different amounts when one pays better. Crossing the peer group with industry holds most of that difference still, and none of it disappears.
This is one plan year, not an average. A true-up, a plan merger or a one-off contribution moves a single year on its own.
Source: DOL Form 5500 for the plan year ended December 31, 2024, EIN 752354902, plan 001 · DOL EFAST2 ↗
The $289 above is the Form 5500 figure for plan year 2024, and it counts every employer dollar on one line. Brinker International, Inc. also files a Form 11-K, which states the match formula for plan year 2025: the card below reads $1,980 a year at a $49,500 salary. That second figure is what the formula pays one worker on that salary, and not an amount either filing reports. The two figures cover different plan years and measure different things, so neither one is the other one corrected.
What Brinker International puts in
$1,980
a year, at a $49,500 salary.
The match paragraph, word for word
“The Company matches in cash at a rate of 100% of the first 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay for a participant’s compensation, as defined in the Plan, up to the maximum deferrable amount allowed by the IRC.”
What you contribute to collect all of it
Contribute at least 5% of your pay to collect the full match.
That is $2,475 a year at a $49,500 salary, and it scales with your own.
Vesting score
100 out of 100
How fast the employer’s money becomes yours. Higher than 48% of the 369 schedules we have scored.
It measures vesting speed and nothing else. It says nothing about the size of the match, what the plan charges, or the funds inside it.
Share of the employer's money that is the worker's at hire and at each of the first 6 anniversaries: 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%. The score is the average of those 7 readings.
Vesting, word for word
“Participants are immediately vested in both employee and employer matching contributions, rollover contributions and the earnings thereon.”
The wait before the match starts and the year-end true-up appear above when the filing states them. Neither is part of the score, and a filing that is silent on one of them is not a plan without it.
What the plan costs, against plans of its size
11th percentile
$15.10 per participant in plan-paid administrative cost, cheaper than 89% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
What is Brinker International's 401(k) match formula?
Brinker International's 401(k) employer match tops out at 4% of pay. A tiered formula pays its best rate on the first slice of pay and less on the next, which is how the rate steps down.
| Match formula | 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 3% of pay |
|---|---|
| then | 50% of the next 2% of pay |
| Maximum employer match | 4% of compensation |
| Paid in company stock | No, paid in cash or per your investment elections |
At a $90,000 salary, contributing 5% ($4,500) earns the full employer match of $3,600 for the year.
What the filing says, word for word
“The Company matches in cash at a rate of 100% of the first 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay for a participant’s compensation, as defined in the Plan, up to the maximum deferrable amount allowed by the IRC.”
Source: Form 11-K filed May 21, 2026, SEC EDGAR, corroborated by the filing's inline-XBRL facts · SEC ↗
What is Brinker International's 401(k) vesting schedule?
Brinker International vests the employer match immediately: 100% is yours as soon as it is paid in. Nothing is forfeited when you leave, which is not true of the two schedules that vest over time.
| Employer match vesting | Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed |
|---|---|
| Your own contributions | Immediate: always 100% yours |
Vesting, word for word
“Participants are immediately vested in both employee and employer matching contributions, rollover contributions and the earnings thereon.”
Source: Form 11-K filed May 21, 2026, SEC EDGAR · SEC ↗
Who can join Brinker International's 401(k), and is enrollment automatic?
Brinker International's filing does not mention automatic enrollment, which is not the same as the plan having none.
| Plan entry | An employee may become a participant on the first of the month following the date the employee has both attained the age of twenty-one and completed 90 days of eligible service. Employees who were previously employed by certain franchisees whose restaurants were acquired by Brinker may become eligible for participation based on their service with the franchisee. |
|---|---|
| Excluded groups | Leased employees, non-US citizens and union employees without specific contract provisions are not eligible to participate in the Plan. |
| Automatic enrollment | Not mentioned in the filing (not proof of absence) |
Eligibility, word for word
“An employee may become a participant on the first of the month following the date the employee has both attained the age of twenty-one and completed 90 days of eligible service. Employees who were previously employed by certain franchisees whose restaurants were acquired by Brinker may become eligible for participation based on their service with the franchisee. Leased employees, non-US citizens and union employees without specific contract provisions are not eligible to participate in the Plan.”
Source: Form 11-K filed May 21, 2026, SEC EDGAR · SEC ↗
Who holds your account
Schedule C of the Form 5500 filed for plan year 2024 reports Fidelity Investments, filed as “FIDELITY INVESTMENTS INSTITUTIONAL”. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to. The trustee that holds the plan’s assets can be a different company, and this filing does not name it.
10,593 plans on file name Fidelity Investments as their recordkeeper. Of those, the 10,022 with a computable fee have a median plan-paid cost of $97.71 per participant.
Participants log in at Fidelity NetBenefits ↗. 401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Fidelity Investments or with any other recordkeeper, and takes nothing for this link. It is here because that is where the account is.
| Recordkeeper | Fidelity Investments |
|---|---|
| Recordkeeper EIN | 042647786 |
What does the Brinker International plan report on Form 5500?
The Brinker International plan reported $494.7M in assets and 42,167 participants for plan year 2024.
| Total plan assets | $494,682,199 |
|---|---|
| Participants | 42,167 |
| Plan-paid admin cost per participant | $15.10 |
How that cost compares
This plan pays $15.10 per participant. The median across plans at hotels and restaurants is $54.65, from the 1,246 of 1,305 whose Form 5500 yields a per-participant cost.
Brinker International 401(k) Savings Plan on its Form 5500 filing: fees, providers and financials
How does Brinker International's 401(k) match compare?
Brinker International, Inc.'s maximum 401(k) match of 4% of pay compares with a median of 4% across the 269 companies in our data with a computable formula.
Employers worth reading next
Of the six employers below, three file at hotels and restaurants, two report the same recordkeeper and one vests on the same schedule.
Maximum match 2.8% of pay. Also at hotels and restaurants.
Maximum match 4% of pay. Also at hotels and restaurants.
Maximum match 6% of pay. Also at hotels and restaurants.
Maximum match 4% of pay. Same recordkeeper, Fidelity Investments.
Maximum match 4% of pay. Same recordkeeper, Fidelity Investments.
Maximum match 6% of pay. Vests immediately too, like Brinker International.
Compare Brinker International, Inc. with any company, side by side
What can you do next?
- Read the Form 11-K on SEC EDGAR ↗
Form 11-K filed May 21, 2026, SEC EDGAR. Every match fact on this page comes from it.
- Changed jobs? Find an old 401(k) ↗
The Department of Labor's Retirement Savings Lost & Found, a free government database.
- This year's IRS contribution limits ↗
The official deferral and catch-up limits every formula operates under.
Questions this filing answers
What is Brinker International, Inc.'s 401(k) match?
Brinker International, Inc. matches 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 3% of pay, then 50% of the next 2% of pay, for a maximum employer match of 4% of compensation (plan year ended December 31, 2025).
When does the Brinker International, Inc. 401(k) match vest?
Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed.
Does Brinker International, Inc.'s 401(k) plan have automatic enrollment?
Not mentioned in the filing (not proof of absence).
Who is the recordkeeper for Brinker International, Inc.'s 401(k)?
Fidelity Investments is named as the recordkeeper on the Form 5500 filed for Brinker International 401(k) Savings Plan for plan year 2024. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to.
Source
The match formula, the vesting schedule and the enrollment rules on this page were read from one document: the Form 11-K annual report that Brinker International, Inc. filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Each of those fields carries the filing sentence it was read from, expandable where the field appears. Nothing on this page was supplied by the employer to this site.
The plan assets, the participant counts, the plan-paid fees and the recordkeeper come from a different document, the plan’s DOL Form 5500 annual return, and the section that reports them links it. Comparisons with other employers are computed across the filings named in the section they appear in.
Read the filing on SEC EDGAR ↗
| Document | Form 11-K annual report |
|---|---|
| Filed with | US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR) |
| Filed by | Brinker International, Inc. |
| SEC CIK | 703351 |
| Accession number | 0000703351-26-000019 |
| Plan | Brinker International 401(k) Savings Plan |
| Period of report | December 31, 2025 |
| Filed | May 21, 2026 |
401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Brinker International, Inc., with the Securities and Exchange Commission or with this plan’s recordkeeper, and publishes this page without their involvement. It republishes a public filing and says where it came from.
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, “Brinker International, Inc. 401(k) plan facts”, from SEC Form 11-K accession 0000703351-26-000019, plan year ended December 31, 2025.
