Financing

How your restaurant sales and profits compare to competitors' and what you can do to improve financial performance

Financing

The Minecraft Movie promotion has apparently been good for McDonald's

Traffic at the fast-food chain has taken off since the company introduced a Minecraft Movie Happy Meal and one for adults, according to the data tracking firm Placer.ai.

Financing

In Hooters, another example of private-equity excess

The Bottom Line: The casual-dining chain’s owners loaded the company up with too much debt coming out of the pandemic. The result was a predictable bankruptcy.

Sales per restaurant increased 17% in 2024 after the cookie and dessert chain opened fewer restaurants following years of dramatic expansion. But for many franchisees, store profitability took a hit.

America’s first breastaurant chain started as a joke and then became a juggernaut. Now, forced into bankruptcy by debt, inflation and some questionable decisions, it is hoping for a second chance, back where it all began.

The Week in Restaurants: This week’s episode features a discussion on Burger King, a look at Raising Cane’s and KFC and more takeaways from the Restaurant Leadership Conference.

The Bottom Line: The drugmaker Eli Lilly this week said that tests of its GLP-1 pill could work just as well as injectable drugs like Ozempic. That could be huge, for the medication and for restaurants.

Restaurant operators and executives, both in public and private, fret about the impact of import taxes on food costs, construction costs and wonder whether they can raise prices. But they’re more worried about the state of the consumer.

The Bottom Line: Restaurant chains like &pizza and MOD Pizza continue to turn to franchising to reinvigorate growth or save dying concepts. But there are huge disadvantages when consumers are cutting back.

The Bottom Line: Restaurant customers shifted away from more traditional concepts to those they felt provided better quality and service. Was this brought on by economic challenges or is it part of a long-term industry reconfiguration?

A Deeper Dive: Kevin Schimpf, Technomic's senior director of research and insights, joins the restaurant finance podcast to talk about the Top 500 chain restaurant report, including which restaurant brands won and which ones lost.

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