With rapid inflation, many consumers are growing acutely aware of rising costs.

Meskipun mudah untuk membayangkan bahwa masalah harga yang baru ditemukan dapat menimbulkan masalah bagi restoran, yang cenderung menawarkan pilihan makanan yang lebih mahal daripada, katakanlah, memasak di rumah, angka-angka tersebut memiliki cerita yang berbeda untuk diceritakan. Tampaknya konsumen Amerika Serikat tidak benar-benar menarik kembali pengeluaran restoran mereka pada saat inflasi sedang meningkat.

Take, for instance, the year 1980. According to World Bank data, the inflation rate in the U.S. in 1980 reached a shocking 13.55%. Yet, in the same year, the share of disposable personal income that Americans spent on food away from home continued its upward trajectory, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Institute’s Food Expenditure Series, even as the share spent on food at home decreased. Similarly, several years earlier in 1974, when the inflation rate hit 11.05%, the share of disposable income spent on food away from home also continued to rise.

Part of this counterintuitive trend may come down to the factors that both boost inflation and boost consumers’ willingness to spend. For instance, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release from May 1981, average hourly compensation increased 10% in 1980. Similarly, a Monthly Labor Review from April 1975 revealed that the BLS calculated that the Hourly Earnings Index grew 9.4% in 1974.

As restaurants experienced in 2020 with each new round of stimulus checks, one of the first things that consumers do when they have more money to spend is go out to eat. For instance, back in March, Applebee’s largest franchisee, Flynn Restaurant Group, experienced a sales spike, which it attributed to “stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment and tax rebates.”

Demikian pula, satu tahun yang lalu, restoran termasuk Church's Chicken, Checker's, Noodles & Co. dan TGI Fridays, bersama dengan beberapa pemilik McDonald's, mengalami lonjakan penjualan terkait stimulus.

In fact, even with today’s inflation rates, more than two-thirds of consumers engage with restaurants at least once a month, according to data from the January edition of PYMNTS’ Digital Divide series, “The Digital Divide Report: Minding The Loyalty Gap,” created in collaboration with Paytronix. Additionally, the study found that nearly one-quarter of consumers engage with restaurants once or twice a week, on top of the 8% that engage three times a week or more.

“Saya pikir itu pasti meningkatkan optimisme, tetapi mungkin optimisme skeptis, karena kami tidak sepenuhnya kembali ke tempat kami sebelumnya,” Alex Lee, wakil presiden dan manajer umum Resy dan American Express Global Dining Network, mengatakan kepada Karen Webster dalam sebuah Wawancara November mengenai iklim di antara operator restoran. “Kami harus mengantisipasi rangkaian tantangan berikutnya yang akan datang.”