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December Restaurant Sales Slip With Omicron Variant and Inflation to Blame
Restaurants reported the weakest growth for the industry since March 2021. The biggest downturn in sales came in the last two weeks in December, as inflation and the omicron variant played the largest roles in the decrease.
The new Black Box Intelligence report on restaurant sales for December 2021 showed disappointing results. According to the report, sales grew 4.1% in December, compared to 8.4% growth in November. The reason for the slowed growth was attributed to continued rising inflation as well as the effects of the omicron variant.
Nation's Restaurant News reported that these numbers are the weakest month for the industry since it reported a 2.7% sales growth in March 2021.
“A significant portion of this sales and traffic growth decline can be attributed to the end-of-year holidays falling during the weekend, which erased some potentially strong weekend sales at the end of 2021,” Nation’s Restaurant News reported. “The data also suggests other factors are at play behind the latest sales stumble, such as concerns about the omicron variant of COVID-19 or consumer pullback in response to historically high inflation rates and skyrocketing restaurant guest checks.”
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