September is the cruelest month for restaurants
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Bloomberg] By Eric Chemi - September 17, 2014 -
If you’ve been noticing a lot of restaurant promotional deals recently, you aren’t imagining things—it’s a real phenomenon.
The restaurant business falls off a cliff when Labor Day hits, the summer ends, and kids go back to school. That’s why all those companies have to start offering deals to fill the gap.
Matt Drewes, senior vice president for national restaurant partnerships at Cardlytics, says that with the start of the school year, “families are dining at home more and not going out as much,” in part to save money for new clothes and school supplies. “Restaurants take the hit from everybody else who makes money in back-to-school [time],” he says.
In the past decade, Labor Day has signaled a significant drop in the frequency of visits to restaurants. On the whole, the bigger chains have been able to combat that by offering promotions aimed at luring customers back—even if that means lower average prices...
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