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Latest dine-in data tells story of cautious customers, vanishing workers

Restaurant sales data shows the return to dine-in will be a slow and cautious one for customers, according to data and insights provider, Black Box Intelligence. In a pair of recent restaurant brand surveys, the company finds evidence that customers are still cagey about eating in stores, while the restaurant workforce is all but vanishing.

While customers appear to be returning to dine-in, it's far from a stampede for tables. (Photo: iStock)

May 14, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

The most recent insights relayed by the data analytics pros at Black Box Intelligence show a cautious bounce-back into dining in restaurants, with some early indications of the way things may go as states open up their stores, extracted from dine-in data out of Texas, which opened its voluminous restaurant industry for dine-in May 1. There's also disconcerting news though for restaurant operators in the data culled around the industry's labor force, which appears to be hemorrhaging workers after weeks of lay-offs and furloughs.  

Black Box Intelligence said in an email to this website that its recent survey shows that nationally, as of May 9, 30% of restaurants polled had opened dining rooms in some manner. Still, the data showed that dine-in remains a very small percentage of all sales, with an average of just 11% of total limited-service restaurant sales showing as dine-in. In fact, full-service restaurants reported just 13% of total sales dine-in, compared to roughly 86% to 88% of their sales coming through this route over the last year. In short, patrons are proceeding back into restaurants for their meals very slowly and cautiously. 

Still, there were some gains. Black Box data showed that comp sales for the industry as a whole were down 45% during the week that ended May 3, but that's a 2.5 percentage point improvement over the previous week and the best result since week ending March 15, the company said.

The company immersed itself thoroughly into the data coming out of Texas, since that state opened its dining rooms to patrons on May 1 and the state is well-known for the size of its economy and sheer volume of restaurants, making it an ideal early return-to-dine-in sample. Black Box data shows that while casual dining dine-in comp sales in Texas did bounce up nearly 11 percentage points over the previous week at the onset of dine-in, the improvement for dine-in at limited-service brands was a much lower 3.4 percentage point improvement. 

Also interesting is that the state's "to-go" business comp sales fell as dine-in opened in Texas, compared to previous weeks. In fact, after averaging an encouraging 142% increase in year-over-year growth in the two weeks before dine-in reopened in Texas, once dining rooms reopened Black Box found that to-go sales growth was up just 123% for the week that end on May 3. 

And perhaps a sign of the increasing numbers of people heading back to the office and in search of a quick bite on the way in or at lunchtime, Texas lunch and breakfast day-parts showed the most growth for the week that ended on May 3, with lunch making the biggest gains in comp sales, increasing 5 percentage points for the week over the previous week. But later-in-the-day hours like mid-afternoon, dinner and late night year-over-year comp sales declined, which Black Box speculated may mean customers are leaning more toward local independent restaurants as dining rooms reopen in Texas, which could indicate how things go for the rest of the nation. 

A vanishing workforce

Black Box's recent "Workforce Response to COVID-19 Survey" indicates the restaurant labor force has been hemorrhaging employees since the start of the year, even though many brands have started to bring workers back from furlough. The survey indicates that less than half — a mere 45% — of the individuals working at chain stores in January this year remained in those jobs today.

The specific reasons behind those job losses were not clear, though many of those who were either furloughed or laid off over recent months just weren't expected to return to their jobs. In fact, only a quarter of furloughed restaurant employees and 67% of those who were "laid off" were expected to return to their jobs if given the chance.  

For those who do return to their restaurant jobs, brands are actively rolling out and installing all manner of the protective tools and equipment, with the most popular items brands identified as using being masks and gloves, acrylic shields, hand sanitizer stations and employee temperature checks. 

Most brands are also pulling out some of their seating to meet social distancing mandates, as well. And finally, a handful of companies have reported that they no longer take cash and some have discontinued credit card acceptance, as well. Both currency and credit cards, of course, generally come in contact with a lot of individuals' hands, increasing the possibility of transmission of COVID-19 and other potential germs.

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.