Before mid-March, when COVID-19 began its assault on restaurant sales, the industry was tracking toward a fate akin to retail. From 1970–2015, malls boomed at twice the rate of the population. The eventual outcome—a landscape with too much retail and… Read More
Retail sales rose 17.7% in May from the previous month, well above the 8% forecast. Total sales and sales excluding autos set records. Stocks jumped on the news. Retail sales shattered already-lofty expectations for May as consumers freed from the… Read More
Despite last week’s blockbuster jobs report, the Federal Reserve is showing no letup as it continues to respond aggressively to economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic that could linger for years. The Fed on Wednesday held its key interest rate… Read More
For nearly five decades, Nation’s Restaurant News has tracked the performance of the industry’s largest chains through its annual Top 200 research. And in most of those years, the data, which reflects the chains’ most recently completed fiscal year, revealed… Read More
Dollar Tree plans to ride a wave of pandemic-related sales momentum into a second quarter opportunity that the company is uniquely positioned to leverage. The deep discounter says it plans to restart renovation projects and other strategic growth initiatives in… Read More
Wendy’s appears to have turned a corner as global same-store sales grew in the low single digits during the final week of May. Comp sales sequentially improved each week in May after a disruption in beef supply. Wendy’s finished the… Read More
The pandemic of 2020 will test the convenience store industry’s reputation of being one of the most recession-proof retail channels in America. According to the 45th annual Convenience Store News Industry Report, total industry sales in 2019 fell by 1.9… Read More
In a rare display of bipartisanship, on June 5, 2020, President Trump signed into law the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act (PPPFA) in an attempt to address many concerns expressed by the small business community around the Paycheck Protection Program… Read More
As high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and family offices survey the commercial real estate landscape, they’re seeing some peaks and some craters. They assuredly lacked a roadmap for navigating a landscape marred by the coronavirus pandemic, though. However, HNWIs and family offices… Read More
It is undeniable—the market trends the industry was forecasting at the end of 2019 no longer apply in 2020. In December, no executive was predicting the nation’s unemployment rate would go from a five-decade low to an eight-decade high in… Read More