On April 1, the long-awaited and contentious minimum wage law for California fast food workers finally took effect, raising their hourly pay to $20. This represents a 25% increase and is $4 per hour higher than the state-wide minimum—a massive shift in an industry where margins are notoriously razor-thin. To boot, based on recent Black Box Intelligence (BBI) data, approximately 90% of limited-service employees in the state were projected to benefit from the raise, with an average hourly increase of nearly $3. To put it briefly, the new law mandates that chain restaurants with “limited or no ta ..read more

Expected Softening in Restaurant Sales May Be Here; Creating an Even Bigger Incentive to Keep Restaurants Clean February provided a much clearer picture of the current state of the restaurant industry after January’s noisy data painted a much bleaker (albeit inaccurate) picture. Same-store sales growth for restaurants was -0.6% in February. Despite the very robust improvement of 4.0 percentage points in the year-over-year sales growth rate for the industry compared to the previous month, the rebound was not strong enough to lift the industry back into positive growth territory. Furthermore, ex ..read more

Navigating Industry Performance Amidst Weather and Economic Challenges   January offered little clarity in terms of the current health of the restaurant industry from a year-over-year growth perspective. Several factors added noise into the data, contributing to results that were much more negative than expected, painting a bleak and inaccurate picture for the industry. The biggest factor was the weather. Large areas of the country experienced unusually cold weather fronts or rainfall during January, negatively impacting restaurant sales and traffic.    Same-store sales growth w ..read more

Promising Start to 2024: The Restaurant Industry Ended 2023 on a High Note December was another relatively strong month for restaurant sales and traffic growth. However, there was enough noise in the data to temper down some of the optimism that the topline results may produce. The month was one of the warmest December on record, and in many regions of the country, it was the warmest ever while snowfall was also extremely moderate. But there is no doubt the year finished with an upswing for the industry, as year-over-year (YOY) traffic growth improved during every month since September. Same-s ..read more

Huddle House’s Journey to Building a Better Brand Experience Since the brand’s inception in 1969, US casual dining restaurant chain Huddle House has experienced significant growth, now operating in over 200 locations across various states. Their data-driven culture enables them to leverage valuable insights for continuous improvement. GuestXM sat down with former Brand President & Chief Operations Officer Troy Tracy to discover how Huddle House strategically uses sentiment data to pinpoint outliers in the customer journey, how cross-team collaboration plays a vital role in driving team ..read more

Understand, Track, and Improve Your Restaurant KPIs As the new year approaches, restaurant operators are working hard to create strategies for success in 2024. However, developing a robust new-year strategy is a significant undertaking that demands collective effort. The key is to establish internal alignment on the metrics that matter most so you and your team can make educated decisions with confidence. To hit your performance goals in 2024, start by tracking and measuring the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are metrics used to assess the performance and success of various aspe ..read more

Elevating Restaurant Success: A Deep Dive into November’s Sales Surge By several accounts, November was a pretty encouraging month for restaurants. For the second consecutive month, year-over-year (YoY) same-store sales and traffic growth accelerated, bringing much-needed optimism to the industry after September’s discouraging dip in performance. Furthermore, November’s traffic growth was the third strongest achieved by the industry since February of 2022. However, considering that the top two months (January and February of 2023) were outliers resulting from the easy Omicron laps from early ..read more

Resilient Trends in Q4 Restaurant Sales & Traffic Unveiling Key Insights from October 2023’s Restaurant Performance According to GuestXM’s Financial Intelligence, restaurant sales and traffic performance rebounded in October, providing some relief that the disappointing September results were somewhat of an anomaly and not the beginning of a severe downturn for the industry. While October’s same-store sales growth of 1.4% was about the same as what the industry saw in August (1.5%), the trend continues to point toward a softening in sales growth this year. As a comparison, average same-sto ..read more

Uncover the Power of Your CSAT Score How satisfied are your customers with your brand? Besides social and review listening, another way to find out what your customers think of your brand is to measure your customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, which is typically obtained through post-dining surveys or feedback forms. Measuring and calculating customer satisfaction keeps you in the know of the most extensive issues and allows you to track how your improvements boost your score over time. To evaluate your CSAT score, you need to consider two perspectives: first, assessing your historical performa ..read more

How Restaurants Can Thrive Amidst Holiday Surges and Navigate the Post-Holiday Challenges The holiday season is upon us, and for restaurants, this means preparing not only for a surge in diners seeking festive feasts and memorable dining experiences but also for the post-holiday slump. In our recent insights article, we revealed that restaurant sales and traffic growth experienced a notable decline in September 2023. Restaurants have also experienced significant check growth due to a 20.4% rise in inflation since 2019, and value perception has declined, with full-service down 7% and limited se ..read more