Earlier today (Thursday, June 10th), we learned that the BlackBox Index of samestore sales for May 2021 — importantly, these data points are on a two-year basis — was up by +5.4%, with two-year traffic off by -5.3%.
Normally, when looking at two-year same-store sales trends, the magnitude of the numbers involved is so low that the two-year rate is calculated by just adding the two years together. The “errors” this simple method produces are negligible. For example, a concept that generates +5.0% same-store sales in the year-ago period, and -5.0% same-store sales in the current period, would have a simple-method two-year number of 0.0%. But the actual math works out to a two-year figure of -0.3%, because the base in the current period is +5.0% larger than what it was in the year-ago period.
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.