Malcolm Knapp reported that June same-store sales declined 7.7% with traffic down 7.2%. For the second consecutive month, comparable guest count results were better than sales, which points to the significant discounting in the industry. Even with companies trying to drive traffic at the expense of average check and margins, traffic trends decelerated sequentially from May on a 1-year, 2-year and 3-year basis.
These June numbers do not reflect the same level of decline that we witnessed back in December, but the Q2 numbers overall are worse than Q1. Same-store sales declined 6.6% on average in Q2 versus -4.2% in Q1. We will learn more about company-specific Q2 results over the next couple of weeks and the winners will be those companies that have been able to offset these soft sales results with continued cost cutting.