Saturday, April 5, 2014

Restaurant Employment Growth Has Peaked Again

The following chart shows the 2 year moving average of the annual growth in the number of food service and drinking places employees.


Click to enlarge.

For those considering opening a new restaurant, there were probably better times in all of recorded history to do so.

March 14, 2014
Restaurant sales growth slows in 2013

“Competition for share of stomach is getting more and more challenging.” - Ron Paul, Technomic’s President

This is not investment advice.

See Also:
Be Honest: Does This Recovery Make Me Look Fat?

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

11 comments:

Rob Dawg said...

Raise the minimum wage and really crush it.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

Yeah. It would certainly speed up the process.

Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour

San Francisco-based Momentum Machines claim that using Alpha will save a restaurant enough money that it pays for itself in a year, and it enables the restaurant to spend about twice as much on ingredients as they normally would – so they can buy the gourmet stuff. Saving money with Alpha is pretty easy to imagine. You don’t even need cashiers or servers. Customers could just punch in their order, pay, and wait at a dispensing window.

Rob Dawg said...

But does it spit in your special sauce when it is having a bad day?

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

There are lots of things it can't do.

Troy said...

I go to In N Out occasionally, and seeing them pay ~10 people $10/hr to produce burgers, fries, and shakes is pretty ridiculous I suppose.

The fry-making could be easily automated, as could the burger making. As could the shakes.

The throughput could be increased too, especially if they moved to the smashed patty technique.

I'd not spent any thought on this prospect before, but, yeah, I can see the burgers going lights-out manufacturing next decade maybe.

But we've got a surplus of young folk still, so mebbe it's for the Japanese to perfect.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=w3d

one of my favorite FRED graphs. So weirdly coordinated.

Troy said...

Oh, and http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

mab said...

Farewell tour, reunion tour, farewell tour, reunion tour.

Behold the business (re)cycle!

Troy said...

Paper today says 1 in 5 California students qualifies for college.

Less ag, less mfg, no professional work, less restaurant, less automobile sector, less retail.

But more people. I see LA 1992 coming to a town near you. Well, not WA I hope, since I want to move up there. Love all the trees!

Troy said...

^ hispanic / black is 1/5. General rate is more like 1 in 3.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

one of my favorite FRED graphs. So weirdly coordinated.

Wow! That chart is amazing! It's going to take some serious effort to explain any of it, without resorting to demonic possession theories of course, lol.

Stagflationary Mark said...

mab,

Behold the business (re)cycle!

It wood appear to be highly corrugated! The Fed may need to start thinking outside the cardboard box lest their plan to thwart deflation becomes aluminum foiled!