Restaurant Industry: A Diary of the COVID-19 Impact May 11

May 11

Thanks Mom!

Every mother loves Mother's Day; a day for them to be recognized and if they are lucky, pampered.

In this Covid-19 world, it also gave a boost to restaurant sales. Traditionally, Mother's day treats restaurants well, and for some it is one of the busiest days of the year. This year, sales at restaurants increased over 44% from the previous Sunday (May 3). And, it's not like May 3 was a soft day; the sales for that day were almost 10% higher than the previous Sunday.

Screen Shot 2020-05-12 at 10.03.00 AM

Total sales volume (not SSS) on Mother's Day was also more than 50% of last year's Mother's Day, a milestone celebrated by many. As an industry we have come a long way from a few weeks ago when aggregate sales were down over 70%. It may take some time for sales to fully recover, but the evidence over the past six weeks shows a steady week by week improvement.

The number of restaurants operating on Mother's Day was down about 24% from the prior year. That means that while total sales volume is down about 50%, there are fewer locations generating those sales, so the restaurants that are operating are experiencing a decline of about 35% to 40% from last year, on a Same-Store Sales (SSS) basis. You can see the beneficial affect Mother's Day had on May 10 in this graph as well.

Screen Shot 2020-05-12 at 10.18.30 AM

More states are relaxing their stay at home orders, led initially by Georgia and a few others. Texas followed a few days later. Yesterday, Monday, May 11, was the two-week mark since Georgia restaurants reopened. We will be paying close attention to the data over the next few weeks to see if there is any negative consequence to the reopenings. So far, we have not heard of any negative consequence.

It may feel like watching the grass grow, but each day is better than before, so we can all hope that trend continues.

Please stay safe!