Consumers Are Trading Down. Here’s How to Prevent Trade-Out | Modern Restaurant Management | The Business of Eating & Restaurant Management News

What’s the saying? You can’t get blood from a turnip? Today’s restaurant guests are certainly an example. There’s only so much wiggle room in their discretionary incomes and it’s showing up in decreasing basket size and check. Based on our most recent QSR sales and traffic data, we can tell from decreases in traffic and basket size that we’re at an inflationary tipping point. In our April 2022 monthly industry impact report, QSR sales in the US are flat at 0.2 percent in Q1 2022 compared to the same quarter last year.

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Our data shows QSRs have struggled to regain traffic since the second half of 2021. And as we examine Q1 2022, we see that QSR performance continues to lag. In March 2022, traffic was down -8.5 percent compared to March 2021. For the quarter, traffic was down -6.3 percent.

When we look at traffic by daypart, lunch and dinner were down by about -3 percent. Even breakfast, which was trending upward throughout 2021, has…

Jana Zschieschang

Jana Zschieschang is Chief Marketing Officer of Revenue Management Solutions, LLC, a global enterprise providing patented, data-driven solutions and services that drive sales and profitability for over 100,000 restaurants in more than 40 countries and 20 languages. In her role, she designs global marketing and communication strategy and implementation at each of RMS’ offices in Tampa, Tokyo, Singapore, London and Paris. Before being named CMO, Zschieschang was RMS President of EMEA, where she founded RMS’s London office, quadrupled the staff and added dozens of new clients.

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Jana Zschieschang