August Was Best Month for Restaurants in Three Years

Restaurants had a good August, according to an article on Nation’s Restaurant News, which reports that same-store sales were up 1.8 percent on average across the industry. Those gains made August the strongest month for the industry since September 2015.

The article, which cites data from TDn2K’s Black Box Intelligence, cautions that year-over-year sales growth should be taken with a grain salt, noting that last August’s restaurant sales were hindered by Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas at the end of the month. Still, this August’s growth continues a month’s upward trend for the industry.

“Regardless of the hurricane impact, it is important to highlight that sales were strong in August,” said Victor Fernandez, Vice President of Insights and Knowledge for TDn2K. “At the end of July there was concern that restaurant sales might be slowing and the much-awaited recovery might be coming to an end. Nonetheless, sales in the first three weeks of August, which were pre-hurricane, were up 1.5 percent. Had this been the final result for the month, it would still have been the best performance since September of 2015 and it represented a 0.9 percentage point improvement over July’s same-store sales.”

While sales were up, NRN notes that traffic was down 0.8 percent in August and some restaurants are facing staffing shortages.

Read the full article at nrn.com.