Good Times Restaurants continued to serve as a microcosm of the restaurant industry during the three months ended June 29, with its full-service Bad Daddy’s brand inching past 2019 sales levels while its Good Times drive-thru chain blew past the benchmark by 14.3%.
The increases came despite the closing of restaurants an hour earlier because of difficulties in recruiting a full staff.
The 0.7% two-year gain in same-store sales raised Bad Daddy’s weekly per-unit sales to $50,397, or the equivalent of $2.6 million on an annual basis. That figure represents a 61.4% jump over revenue levels of a year ago.
Bad Daddy’s is now the larger of Good Times’ brands by unit count, with 40 stores. The brand also has a virtual concept called Bad Mama’s Chicken.
“We have seen an increased preference for the full-service restaurant experience as vaccines have become more widely available and customers have become more comfortable in group settings with reduced COVID-19-related restrictions,” Ryan Zink, Good Times Restaurants’ CEO, said in a statement.
Good Times’ two-year increase pushed average weekly unit sales to $29, 784, or $1.5 million on an annual basis. On a comparable basis, the 32-unit quick-service brand outpaced its year-ago sales by 2.9%.
Many limited-service brands fared well during the pandemic because they featured drive-thrus, an option that more than offset the shutdown of their dining rooms as consumers embraced takeout.
Restaurants of all service styles are scrambling to recruit enough employees to handle the surge in business that many operations are experiencing.
“Due to hourly staffing constraints that are common in the industry today, both of our concepts are still operating at reduced hours, with most of our restaurants closing one hour earlier, compared to 2019,” Zink said. “We continue to prioritize higher levels of customer service and improved working hours for our employees over maximizing operating hours.”
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