Earlier today (Thursday, April 15th), we learned that the BlackBox Index of samestore sales for March 2021 — importantly, these data points are on a two-year basis — was up by +1.8%, with two-year traffic off by -9.4%.
With this report, we update our data-driven Kalinowski Restaurant Industry Index for Q1E to +7.1%. This is the first positive quarter since Q4 2019’s +4.2% showing. The Q1 2020/21 two-year number works out to +3.5%. (The Kalinowski Restaurant Industry Index declined by -3.4% in Q1 2020, followed by its worst-ever performance
of -17.5% in Q2 2020.)
In December, we published a report — “Look to Popeyes to Learn about Domino’s and Papa John’s” — in which we noted that Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen would lap highly challenging same-store sales comparisons before Domino’s and Papa John’s would, and how Popeyes performed might have some lessons for these pizza players. Since then, Popeyes’ parent company Restaurant Brands International (QSR; Not Rated) reported that Popeyes’ Q4 2020 U.S. same-store sales declined by -6.4%. This, of course, lapped Popeyes’ Q4 2019 U.S. same-store sales advance of +37.9% — the best quarter for any publicly-traded restaurant concept of meaningful size of which we are aware.