In perhaps the worst market conditions the restaurant industry has seen in nearly 20 years, full service restaurants saw some sign of improvement in September. In partnership with GuestMetrics, foodservice industry consultant Technomic finds that nationally, full service restaurant performance declined 6.3 percent in September compared with 12.0 percent for the month of August.
The monthly SalesMetrics report was designed to report on monthly restaurant sales performance trends. This new report combines actual point-of-sale (POS) data from over 2,700 national full service independent and chain restaurants. Guest check data is collected, aggregated and analyzed to identify regional sales performance trends, day part, cuisine, guest traffic and average check shifts in consumer usage and spending.
Interesting findings include:
• Although sales in September where down 6.3 percent nationally, regions varied dramatically with the Phoenix market showing year-over-year growth of 7.6 percent and the Los Angeles market declining 12.1 percent.
• Daypart trends indicate that dinner business has seen the largest decrease in usage (-6.8 percent) followed by breakfast (-5.9 percent), and late night (-5.8 percent). Lunch had the smallest decline (-5.3 percent).
• Performance trends analyzed by cuisine types varied dramatically with seafood restaurants posting the smallest decline (-0.5 percent) and steak restaurants declining more significantly (-12.3 percent).
• In general, guest traffic decreased 6.1 percent in September. Chain restaurants declined by 6.6 percent, with independent restaurants showing only a 5.7 percent decrease.
• Average check price has decreased 5.5 percent, with chain restaurants declining only 4.4 percent compared with independents, down 6.4 percent.
'SalesMetrics reporting and analysis on marketplace performance provides restaurant operators and foodservice suppliers with the tools necessary to monitor and benchmark their performance,' says Darren Tristano, EVP of Technomic. 'Until now, point-of-sale level data has been impossible to obtain and will provide many with what can only be described as the Holy Grail.'
SalesMetrics reports on actual point-of-sales performance of over 2,700 full service independent and chain restaurants nationally representing 285,000 daily transactions and over $4.5 billion in annual sales. Data is collected daily directly from the restaurant location using GuestMetrics proprietary software application and aggregated, classified and analyzed using Technomic's proprietary restaurant classification and menu mapping formats. Aggregate performance results are available on a monthly, quarterly and annual reporting format.
To find out more about other industry reports from Technomic, please visit www.foodpubs.com.
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