The New Normal: Restaurants are growing again

Since the COVID crisis hit back in March we on the data team at Paytronix have been tracking the restaurant recovery. After an initial crash that’s been well documented, we saw a relatively consistent level of growth of about 0.4% per day starting in late March and extending right into June. This was the time that restaurants adjusted to the crisis, shifting their business models away from on-premise and over to takeout and delivery. 

Around mid-June, however, something changed and the market simply flatlined for the next 30 days. 

The good news is that we’ve come out of the slump and, since mid-July, are marching consistently upwards. There is a catch, of course. The growth velocity is about half of what we saw before, with the new growth rate at about 0.2% per day. The number of visits remains higher than the amount spent, mostly because our data includes fine dining restaurants which, because of their shuttered dining rooms, continue to be the hardest hit. 

This seems to correlate to the number of COVID cases, with growth happening as cases decrease and then stalling as cases increase. Also worth noting that all regions of the country seemed aligned in how they’re recovering, as some of the regional differences we saw in the past have all but disappeared.