Restaurants have been seeing a steady increase in sales, but not in dine-in customers.
Key Details
- Many chain restaurants reported higher sales in the third quarter, but that doesn’t mean more customers were visiting.
- As growing inflation continues to affect people in the U.S. many have resorted to cutting back on restaurant outings causing dine-in numbers to decline.
- Restaurants have had to increase prices due to inflation and many customers can’t afford to eat out, but sales have continued to go up regardless of the foot-traffic decline.
Why it’s news
Chain restaurants have been seeing an increase of sales, but not an increase of dine-in customers.
As inflation continues to plague the U.S. many families have had to cut back on non-essential things like eating out at restaurants. Many families have resorted to cooking at home and attempting to save money.
Although many Americans have cut back on dining out, restaurants are reporting higher sales. This is mostly due to the fact that most restaurants had to dramatically increase prices.
Since restaurants had to increase prices they might not be getting as much foot traffic, but ticket prices are now higher which is causing sales to go up. One bill might cost what two or three did years prior which is sending sales up.
“You’re seeing that dichotomy where you see solid sales numbers, but at the end of the day it’s mostly … because of price increases,” says head of analytical research at Placer.ai, RJ Hottovy.
Restaurants have been trying to bring customers back in, but it hasn’t been working too well. Some stated that cutting back on discounts caused a big loss of customers, but many restaurants can’t do discounts at this time due to the high costs of almost everything.
Until inflation starts to slow down and Americans can begin spending more money again, the number of dine-in customers will most likely stay low.
