The restaurant industry appears on the road to recovery, but it will remain a slow, bumpy ride, according to the NPD Group, which expects restaurants will continue to offer deals to lure customers.
Traffic to restaurants was basically flat last year, NPD said, but visits to restaurants fell from 62 billion in 2007, the year the Great Recession began, to 59 billion in 2010.
“We bottomed out last year,” NPD industry analyst Bonnie Riggs said, noting the latest recession was the worst since NPD began tracking the industry in 1976. “Never before have we seen weakness of this magnitude for this prolonged period of time. Through 2010, the rate of decline slowed. It was still negative, but not as weak. But in the fourth quarter, the decline stopped.”