Contents

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• Economic Reports

Understanding Restaurant Data.

Same Store Sales.

Same-store sales is a key retail barometer that restaurants use to gauge the effectiveness of their systemwide restaurant units open for one year or more. The data eliminates stores open for less than one year. This information can be used to gauge the effectiveness and sales productivity of pre-existing stores. USBR calculates same-store sales data using units open at least one year. Excluded are restaurants open less than one year. USBR adds proprietary features such as moving average trend lines to determine the relative strength of a specific restaurant category and comparing this to the overall composite retail index.

Sales Per Square Foot.

Sales per square foot measures how effectively one restaurant allocates its space to generate sales dollars versus another similar restaurant establishment. Sales per square foot can vary tremendously between one restaurant operator and another. This can be due to demographics, geographic location , menu, pricing, or some miscellaneous reason.

The type of restaurant establishment can also impact the sales per square foot figures. A full service restaurant unit can generally expect a higher sales per square foot than a limited service eating establishment. This difference is due to the much higher operating costs and margins of a full service restaurant.

U.S. Business Reporter primarily reports sales per square foot data using ONLY company-owned restaurant units. This normally gives a good depiction and benchmark of how their franchised units should be performing. Since a franchisor collects a royalty payment of each franchisee, it would be inaccurate to include each franchisees sales into the final sales per square foot data.

A restaurant chain can generally grow and expand much faster if the company franchises its units. A franchisee can generally expect to pay an initial upfront fee to the franchisor and agree to a long term agreement to keep the franchise open. This can generally be 10 to 20 years. The franchisor can expect to collect a royalty based on the volume of sales of a franchised unit. The franchisor provides national and local advertising support, training and development, and sometimes financing to ensure the franchisee operates a successful unit.