Casual Dining Market Share Opportunities for Large Concepts

By Mark Kalinowski Published on December 8, 2020 at 12:00 AM

About six months ago, we published a report examining market-share opportunities within the casual dining sector. In this report, we update our numbers. One of the important changes is that we now look for 8%-20% of the casual dining restaurants in the U.S. that were in operation as of the start of 2020 to be closed permanently by the end of March 2021. (Previously, we were looking for 3%-15% of casual dining restaurants to be closed permanently by the end of December 2020.) Keep in mind that we expect these closures to be heavily weighted toward independents/momand-pops and, to a somewhat lesser degree, smaller (privately-held in nearly all cases) restaurant chains.

Restaurants The BlackBox Index for November 2020 Shows Sequential Deceleration

By Mark Kalinowski Published on December 3, 2020 at 12:00 AM

Earlier today (Thursday, December 3rd), we learned that the BlackBox Index of samestore sales for November 2020 was down by -10.3%, with same-store traffic off by -16.3%. The -10.3% figure is -280 basis points worse than the -7.5% number for October 2020, and -220 basis points worse than the -8.1% figure for September 2020.

Updating our Q4E Kalinowski Casual Dining Same-Store Sales Index

By Mark Kalinowski Published on November 30, 2020 at 12:00 AM

With this report, we update our data-driven Kalinowski Casual Dining Index for Q4E to -18.4%. This figure is based on our latest proprietary checks/data as regards samestore sales performance for this segment during October and November. Our implied numbers for these October, November, and December are approximately -14%, -19%, and -22%, respectively.