The proportion of U.S. restaurants that couldn’t cover their rents dropped precipitously last month as small businesses aggressively raised prices to cover soaring costs and declining gas prices left consumers with more money to spend, according to new research.
Still, the situation is far from rosy, according to the latest data and analysis from Alignable.com, an online resource center for small businesses. More than a third of the nation’s restaurants (36%) couldn’t pay their landlords in full for the month, even with a tailwind from raised prices, Alignable reported.
The encouraging statistic was the 10-point drop in delinquency rates for eating places, to the lowest level seen by the business since April, the researcher said. The percentage of restaurants that couldn’t pay their rents was 33% that month, after falling to 26% in February. Most types of small businesses found themselves with more money back then because of a robust start to the year, Alignabe said.
It noted that 29% of the small businesses surveyed in September said they had fully recovered from the downturn of the pandemic. The figure for restaurants was not broken out by Alignable.
The company’s report on September rent payments was based on surveys of 4,232 small businesses during the last two weeks of September.
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