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Below is a complimentary excerpt from an institutional research note written by our Restaurants analysts Howard Penney and Daniel Biolsi. If you are an institutional investor interested in accessing our research email sales@hedgeye.com |
Nielsen surveyed consumers from June 5-7 in four states California, New York, Texas, and Florida (where restaurants are opened to varying degrees) on their eating out behavior.
Of the 1,600 respondents, 41% had been out to eat or drink in the two weeks leading up to the survey. 30% had been out for a meal, and 12% had been out for a drink.
The pre-COVID norm is around 80%.
Younger respondents had gone out to eat at nearly twice the rate of older respondents, as seen in the following chart. Texas and Florida a month ago had similar percentages as New York, and California do now.
One month later, Texas and Florida have seen the percentage of respondents who have dined out increases by 18% to 40% and 14% to 35%, respectively.
This would suggest that the sales increase we have seen in restaurants in re-opened states is driven by a smaller group that is visiting multiple times. Of the survey respondents, 71% said they had gone out between two and five times.
Two-thirds of respondents have ordered food to go in the past two weeks. Of those, 14% included alcoholic drinks in their to-go orders.
With restaurant industry customer participation at about half pre-pandemic levels, there is a lot more recovery.
