Now What are the Excuses?

When things are going well, poor leaders often blame external factors. Restaurant sales were down in 2016. Blame it on the election! However, if you look at the monthly information, the sales really dropped in December--after the election. And on a year-to-year comparison they rebounded in January. So what explains December's poor showing? Nobody went out because...

It wasn't because of retail shopping. Retail was up through 2016 from 2015, including December's rate...unless most of those were online sales and everyone stayed home. Web sales were up 15% from the year before. But with increased retail traffic in December compared to November, restaurant sales shouldn't have dropped any more than any other month.

Weather? What else?

Maybe the election buoyed restaurant sales through most of the year as people gathered to talk about the issues and personalities.