Food & Beverage

With dine-in permitted at more US restaurants, transactions improve

June 1, 2020

Out of the more than 1million restaurants that werein business as of this year in the U.S,, the NPD Group estimated Monday that nearly 320,000 were now offering some sort of on-premise dining after being forced to shut them over the past couple of months to comply with COVID-19 mandates. As a result, the data analysis company said that transaction declines at major U.S. chains improved for the most recent week of complete data that ended May 24.

Total major restaurant chain transactions declined 18% in the week compared to the same week a year ago, which is a 25-point gain from the worst decline in transactions during the pandemic in the week ending April 12, when transactions fell 43% over the previous year's week, according to an NPD press release. 

QSR chains' transactions were down 17% for that week ending May 24 from last year, an improvement from being off 20% the previous week. Full-service chains made even more improvement, moving up nine percentage points from the week ending May 17 to the week ending May 24, when transactions were still down 49% from the same week a year earlier. 

NPD also found that total industry traffic at chain and independent restaurants was down 35% in April compared to a year ago. Drive-thru —mostly at QSRs — accounted for nearly half of all restaurant occasions (46%), while digital orders grew by 106% in April compared to a year ago and now account for 20% of all restaurant occasions.
 
"Among the most interesting behaviors we're seeing is the rapid escalation of using technology to engage with restaurants," NPD Food Industry Adviser David Portalatin said in the release.  "Going forward, we might expect a digital divide that sets apart restaurants with well- executed digital offerings and requires those without to turn to the newfound prowess of third-party platforms."

NPD Group is a market research company based in Port Washington, New York.