We are given that the number of restaurants increases exponentially at a rate of 2%. We will use the following formula for exponential growth:
Where P is the number of restaurants at a time "t", P0 is the initial number of restaurants, "r" is the growth rate in decimal form, and "t" is time. Replacing the values we get:
Simplifying:
Now we replace time t = 6, since there are 6 years between 2017 and 2023:
Solving the operations: