In normal times, ArrowStream's economists would have focused on reporting February restaurant sales, which were 5.2 percent better than the prior year (due to a 2.2 percent gain in traffic and 3 percent increase in menu prices). However, that pales in comparison to the current landscape of the restaurant industry battling the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
Instead, in ArrowStream's Maloni Report, our economists looked more broadly at the industry's significance on total retail sales to further illustrate the extent of short- and long-term effects we can expect.
"Restaurants carried the third largest share of total retail sales on record. And as the chart shows, this has been a growing trend with more of the consumers’ dollar going to restaurants than grocery stores for several years now. Although we could see a blip in this during the spring, we fully expect the restaurant share to rebound and resume the longer-term growth trend thereafter."