‘Mom-and-pop’ restaurants on the decline
Visits to restaurants are down, which is hurting “mom-and-pop” establishments. NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y., compared restaurants open as of the end of March to the same time period last year and found that independent restaurants dropped in count by 3%. The decline in independent units brought the total U.S. restaurant count down by 1% to 630,511 units.
NPD says the decline is a reflection of stalled traffic growth over the past several years.
“It’s a tough road for independent restaurants, particularly in a down or even ‘soft’ economic climate,” said Greg Starzynski, director of product management for NPD Foodservice, in a release. “Independent operators do not have the resources of a chain to sustain themselves in slower times.”
Although not by much, chain restaurants are still expanding in unit size, increasing 1% from a year ago.
Meanwhile, Target invests in its café
Target Corp. will test new café concepts at 14 locations, USA Today reports. The store’s typical offerings of hot dogs and nachos will be replaced with a wider variety of items, including “artisan-style” pizza and fresh salads.
The company made the decision to go in a new direction after hearing from customers who wanted higher-quality food and more of a fast-casual atmosphere, Tina Tyler, Target’s chief stores officer, told USA Today.
About 40% of Target customers today visit the café while shopping, but Tyler says the test is less about boosting that figure and more about showing customers the brand is serious about health and wellness.
Fast-casual chain Freshii will go into nine Target stores; Pizza Hut will open in three stores; and two Minneapolis locations will get outposts of Italian restaurant D’Amico & Sons. About 1,700 out of Target’s nearly 1,800 stores have cafés, the newspaper reports.
Indicators
- 3.7% The U.S. economy grew 3.7% in the second quarter, which was signifıcantly higher than the original 2.3% estimate, according to the Commerce Department’s measure of gross domestic product.
- $10.84 billion San Francisco-based car-service app Uber is expecting its global bookings to rise nearly threefold to $10.84 billion this year and reach $26.12 billion the next, Reuters reported. Based on those figures, revenue for 2015 would be about $2 billion.
- 7.0% U.S. bottled-water volume rose 7% last year, which puts it on track to outsell soda by 2017, according to forecasts by industry tracker Beverage Marketing Corp., New York. From 2000 to 2014, per capita bottled-water consumption more than doubled to 34.02 gallons from 16.74 gallons, while soda fell to 39.92 gallons from 53.17 gallons, according to Beverage Marketing Corp.
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