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Restaurant visits holding steady

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August 26, 2019

U.S. consumers visited restaurants this July at the same pace they did last July, and consumer spending was up 3% compared to year ago, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. Total U.S. traffic volume for commercial restaurants in the year ending June 30 was 61 billion visits.

QSRs and fast casuals lead the industry

Industry bright spots this summer included quick service restaurants traffic gains and continued visit growth to fast casual restaurants, although increases were not as strong as in previous years, according to NPD. Digital orders, which included internet, mobile app and text message orders for carry out and delivery, grew rapidly but still represented a small amount of traffic share. On-premise dining also saw gains this summer.  

NPD's SalesTrack Weekly, which tracks national same-store sales of 60 brands representing over 113,000 QSR and full-service locations, showed healthy dollar growth in July. The company's Crest Performance Alerts — which provides a weekly view of chain-specific transactions and share trends for 73 quick service, fast casual, midscale chains and casual dining chains — tracked flat-to-positive gains throughout the month. 

Full-service visits down

Visit declines in the full-service segment continued to prevent the industry from growing, however. In five years, the midscale/family dining full-service category has lost 500 million visits. The casual dining full-service category has been holding steady as of late after four years of declines.

"The state of the restaurant industry held steady in July compared to last year, consistent with our long-held view on the market outlook," David Portalatin, NPD food industry adviser said in the release. "The long term fundamentals of the market tell us to expect relatively flat traffic trends in the near term, but there are many pockets of growth, particularly among QSR and fast casual concepts."