Could U.S. Restaurant Industry Same-Store Sales Turn Positive in Q4

By Mark Kalinowski Published on October 19, 2020 at 12:00 AM

Could the U.S. restaurant industry as a whole get back to positive same-store sales in Q4 2020? At this point, we believe that our Kalinowski Restaurant Industry Index — comprised of 47 publicly-traded restaurant concepts, and which generated over $180 billion in 2019 U.S. systemwide sales, and this accounted for over 30% of the overall domestic restaurant industry — has about a 40% chance of turning positive in Q4 2020.

WEN Is Wendy’s Overtaking Burger King as the #2 U.S. Burger Concept

By Mark Kalinowski Published on October 15, 2020 at 12:00 AM

Based on our math, it looks like Wendy’s is in the process of decisively overtaking Burger King (owned by Restaurant Brands International [QSR; Not Rated]) as the 2nd-largest burger concept in the U.S., based on domestic systemwide sales.

Updating our Q3E Kalinowski Restaurant Industry Same-Store Sales Index

By Mark Kalinowski Published on October 14, 2020 at 12:00 AM

With this report, we update our data-driven Kalinowski Restaurant Industry Index for Q3E to -2.3%. Given all of the upheaval of the last six months, this is a number that should be considered favorably, even though it is in negative territory. It marks substantial sequential improvement from Q2 2020’s -17.5% figure, and is even better than Q1 2020’s -3.3% showing.