Customer Experience

Restaurant transactions on the rise

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May 11, 2020

Lingering tailwinds from government relief payments and the lifting of dine-in restrictions in states like Georgia, Florida, and Texas helped improve U.S. restaurant chain transaction declines in the week ending May 3, according to The NPD Group. For that week, total transactions were down 26% from a year ago compared to a 32% decline the prior week and a decline of 43% the week ending April 12. That week from April 5-12, marked the low point of the COVID-19 disruption, according to CREST Performance Alerts, which provides a rapid weekly view of chain-specific transactions and share trends for 70 quick-service, fast casual, midscale, and casual dining chains. 

Restaurant dine-in restrictions have been lifted for nearly 192,000 restaurant units or about 29% of all units since May 1, based on an analysis using NPD's ReCount restaurant census. Required social distancing limits can reduce dining room capacity by as much as 75% in some areas. Using pre-COVID-19 restaurant customer traffic, which NPD continually tracks, the potential value of opened restaurants would have yielded a transaction decline of only 20% in the week ending May 3 based upon 100% capacity of the opened units. 

"Many restaurant operators have weighed the value of limited operations versus the cost of opening, health risks or other factors, and chose to remain closed or continue with a takeout-only model," David Portalatin, NPD food industry adviser said in the release. "The most recent week's performance suggests we've achieved about 30% of the potential volume in states where restrictions were lifted. Looking ahead to next week, another 46,000 restaurants could come back online."

Transactions at quick-service restaurant chains were down 24% in the week ending May 3 versus a year ago, compared to a 30% decline in the previous week. Full-service restaurants also improved, declining 67% versus a 71% decline in the week ending April 26.