Happy
new year to you! After a month rest, the year 20091st topic i going to share with you is about how is the Restaurant forecast for U.S this year. As in the beginning of the year, are you ready or in the mid
of preparing any plan for this year in Food & Beverage Industry? The
following is the report from National Restaurant Association for Sales growth
forecast 2009. This might be able to help you for any risk management and
business plan for this year. ~elvan
(Washington,
D.C.) Restaurant industry sales
are expected to reach $566 billion in 2009, with the industry employing 13
million individuals in 945,000 restaurant-and-foodservice outlets nationwide,
according to the National Restaurant Association's 2009 Restaurant Industry
Forecast released today. The Forecast projects that while overall restaurant
industry sales will increase in current dollars by 2.5 percent over 2008
figures, the numbers translate to an inflation-adjusted decline of 1.0 percent.
Despite the economic downturn, the industry will remain a cornerstone of the
economy, representing 4 percent of the U.S.
gross domestic product and employing 9 percent of the U.S. workforce,
and restaurants will continue to adapt to the latest menu trends and consumer
preferences.
Restaurant industry performance softened in
June, as the National Restaurant Association's comprehensive index of
restaurant activity posted a modest decline. The Association's Restaurant
Performance Index (RPI) - a monthly composite index that tracks the health of
and outlook for the U.S.
restaurant industry - stood at 98.3 in June, down 0.3 percent from May and the
lowest level in three months.
"The June decline in the Restaurant Performance Index was the result of a
drop in the current situation component," said Hudson Riehle, senior vice
president of research and information services for the Association.
"Restaurant operators reported negative same-store sales and customer
traffic levels in June, after posting somewhat stronger results in May."
Every grocery store knows that a hungry shopper
is likely to buy more. On the other side are product marketers who would love
to stuff customers with samples of specific items to obtain converts to their
brands. Retailers worry: Could food and product sampling sate hunger-and with
it, the desire to fill the grocery basket? As reported in today's Stanford
Knowledgebase, Baba Shiv, professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate
School of Business, has found evidence that product sampling in fact can do
what a good French appetizer is intended to do: whet the appetite for more-even
in someone who was not hungry to begin with. Not only can sampling stimulate
the desire for more of the same product-cheese, soda, or what have you-but it
can also spark an overall desire for anything pleasurable, be it other
foodstuffs or even seemingly unrelated things, such as exotic vacations and spa
experiences. Such a phenomenon is likely, then, to stimulate buying.
