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Eating Out vs. Eating at Home
Let's see where we are now. It has been 3 1/2 years since I posted that.
The trend of eating out more and more appears to be over. If true, that does not bode well for the restaurant industry going forward.
As a side note, can you spot our recovery in the chart? I can't.
Here's a new trend worth considering though.
The exponential trend that was once thought dead has been resurrected. Way to go Bernanke. Hurray.
See Also:
Eating Out vs. Eating at Home v.4
Source Data:
U.S. Census: Monthly & Annual Retail Trade
St. Louis Fed: Population
St. Louis Fed: CPI
7 comments:
Survivor bias? These figures adjusted for inflation and population increases? Eating out and retail gas sales are both at same levels from 6 years ago. What does that infer?
Fatboy,
"What does that infer?"
At best, population growth and inflation are now the sole drivers for growth?
My big concern is that the "eating out" percentage will stay flat until the next recession and will then begin to fall.
I guess we should be thankful that the typical American is not as dire as I am. I'm about 10% on the "eating out" chart in general.
Put another way, if the typical American ate at home as much as I do, then I would say we have roughly 4x more restaurants than we would need. Ouch.
"At best, population growth and inflation are now the sole drivers for growth?
My big concern is that the "eating out" percentage will stay flat until the next recession and will then begin to fall."
Core's in line. Ask Bernanke. So what if the eating out percentage stays flat? Like last time, the good ones survived, the bad ones didn't. Too bad the same couldn't be said of the financial sector.
We're finding it good fun to eat out occasionally at lunchtime, using vouchers, and having a light dinner at home in the evening. As the weather warms, we're on the look out for vouchers that'll let us lunch in pub beergardens. And a larger part of dinner will come from our kitchen garden. We might even repeat our experiment of a few years ago of eating our own garden snails with our own garlic and parsley.
I would not ask Bernanke anything, the guy is wrong more often than not.
dearieme,
Who doesn't like vouchers? ;)
GYSC,
I like to think that Bernanke is random in the same way Cramer is.
If either of them was consistently wrong then I could make serious money *always* doing the opposite! ;)
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