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Comparable-restaurant sales for the casual-dining sector rose by an estimated 6.2 percent in January, which compares with the 2.2-percent increase a year earlier for the comparable month.
Guest counts on a same-restaurant basis rose by 3.3 percent for January, an improvement in comparison with the guest traffic increase of 1 percent in January 2005.
The final accounting for January will depend in large part on shifts in results for individual concepts based on the specific weeks included in their accounting month.
Same-restaurant sales and guest counts for casual-dining brands grew in all four weeks of fiscal January.
The one negative week was because of heavy snow in the East North Central region through New England during the week ending January 23.
The spread between the best week in January and the worst week was 8.1 percentage points, with the best week being the third week - a comparison eased by the sales impediment posed by severe snowstorms in the Midwest and New England in the comparable week a year earlier. The worst week in January 2006 was the last of the month.
The casual-dining sector's estimated comparable-restaurant sales growth in January - 6.2 percent - was the highest monthly number since the 6.6-percent gain recorded in September 2000. The drivers of the strong performance were gift card redemptions and very favorable weather comparisons, particularly in the third week of January. It is likely that those two drivers accounted for two-thirds of the comparablerestaurant sales gain in January. There was less financial pressure on the consumer from home heating costs in January than expected, as it was a very mild month. While homeowners paid more than they did a year earlier to heat their homes, the increase was substantially lower than the Department of Energy estimates issued last October. As an example, natural gas prices, which were nearly $15.40 per million Btu in December, were down to $7.48 as of Feb. 10.
The estimated same-restaurant sales change in January of 6.2 percent surpassed the weighted average same-store retail industry performance of 5.1 percent, as measured by Bear Stearns' retail analysts. The pattern of the period from April 2003 through January 2006 is that Bear Stearns' retail same-store results outperformed those of the casual-dining sector, except for...