Restaurant industry same-store sales growth slowed in February, but still rose 3.2 percent despite brutal storms in the Northeast and frigid cold throughout the country, according to the latest MillerPulse survey.
A slowdown was expected for February, in part because sales growth in January of 6 percent was a post-recessionary high for the survey. But the industry is still in good shape, according to Larry Miller, co-founder of the monthly MillerPulse index.
“In isolation, if I told you that sales would be up 3.2 percent for the month, that’d be really good,” Miller said. “That’s where you want the industry to be. If the industry formula is 2 percent price and 1 percent traffic, in theory, that’s healthy growth.”
Fine-dining growth lifted the industry during the month. MillerPulse does not typically break out fine-dining sales because the sub-sector is often volatile from one month to the next. But fine-dining restaurant sales rose in the double digits during the month, Miller said.
The increase helped generate same-store sales growth of 4.6 percent for full-service restaurants, including casual-dining concepts, which had same-store sales of 2.3 percent for the month.
“Fine dining was very strong,” Miller said. “It’s a strange segment. Every once in a while you get huge months. And sometimes you get terrible months.”
Fine-dining chains have been buoyed by increases in business travel and a strong economy for wealthy Americans.
For the rest of the industry, sales appear to be coming from a combination of menu price increases and higher priced items. While industrywide sales rose during the month, overall traffic fell 0.7 percent. Traffic fell for both quick-service restaurants, which declined 1.4 percent, and casual-dining concepts, which fell 1.1 percent.
Casual-dining results slightly outpaced quick service. Casual dining’s same-store sales increased 2.3 percent, while quick-service same-store sales rose 2.2 percent. While the gap is narrower than the 70-basis-point difference during January, it marks the second straight month casual dining outperformed quick service, which reported higher results for well over three years before January.
Overall, restaurant sales have been improving in recent months due to a combination of easier comparisons, lower gas prices and rising employment. But Miller suggested that weather caused problems, particularly in the Northeast, where New England was battered by snowstorms. In a report earlier this week, First Data Corp. said snowstorms hurt restaurant sales in Boston in February.
“When there wasn’t weather, we had good sales,” Miller said. “And since the storms, things have picked back up.”
He added that sales were strongest in the West, where weather was less of a problem.
“That’s a little more evidence that it could be weather,” he said.
MillerPulse results are based on a monthly survey of operators averaging more than $40 billion in industry sales, representing all regions of the country and across the quick-service, casual-dining and fine-dining segments. Restaurant chains and operators interested in participating in the MillerPulse survey for additional results and insight can register at the MillerPulse website.
Contact Jonathan Maze at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @jonathanmaze