Mirus Reporter

The official numbers for July are now out and it was a bad month for restaurants sales, down by -4.7% according to TD2NK. I thought it would be good to take a mid-month check on the Mirus Index to see if August could be the month to turn things around. Based on the first 14 days of the month, the sales slump continues in August.

Same Store Sales in Mirus Index were positive in both Q1 and Q2 of 2017, and you can see the trail end of that in the chart above. The positive gains were declining in June, and July 4th was a great weekend, but by the middle of July the month to date numbers were negative and they haven't budged much.

All of this is focused on sales, but what about traffic? Q3 will be the seventh quarter in a row of negative customer traffic into restaurants. TD2NK measures that traffic fell -8.7% from July 2015 to July 2017. The Mirus Index has traffic down -2.7% at the mid-way point of Q3 2017. You can manipulate same store sales, but you can't manipulate customer traffic.

We will keep an eye on things, and keep you informed. If you would like to learn more about how you can get the Mirus Index every day, click on the button below.

Restaurant sales and customer traffic have been in decline for months, and July didn't help. While the results were not the worst in recent history, July extends several streaks that started at the start of 2016. Same store sales for July fell (1.2%) on (2.6%) less traffic. July was the first month this year that recorded negative growth in both numbers.

Whether you are a franchisor or franchisee you want each of your restaurant locations and its employees to make more money. Challenges being placed on already thin margins make it difficult to keep up with the increased demands from labor, food costs, rent etc. And in today’s competitive labor market the cost of locating and training new staff members just adds to the challenge.

If you’re a table service oriented restaurant and you’ve gone to tip pooling or even ventured into the no-tip territory you may have already seen a difference in employee motivation or lack thereof due to these policies where the excellent servers are now making less in tips while the mediocre server is pretty happy. So now you need to find other ways to put the spark back in your team.