Seasonal Analysis of Restaurant Trends

Seasonality of the Restaurant Industry: Friend or Foe? The restaurant industry can be a fickle friend. Business trends directly with the economy and is linked with a dizzying amount of other factors, enough to make any manager go crazy. Yet at the same time the industry is lucrative and therefore enticing. The industry has been a contributing factor in the slow recovery from economic recession and is showing growth in sales (Stensson, 2011). Specifically, the fast food industry if projected to grow at a slightly higher rate of 3.3% over that of the full service industry at 3.1% (Stensson, 2011). With expanding sales comes higher demand and restaurant jobs are estimated to rise by 1.3 million positions by 2021 (Stensson, 2011). As the national economy begins to recover the fact that rising income is the number one contributor to restaurant industry spending becomes more relevant (Ray, n.d.). Today more and more people are eating out with as much as 49% of the consumer food budget going to the restaurant industry each year (Stensson, 2011). But a growing market does not mean an easy one. Managers of both the fast food and full service sections of the industry must be able to recognize how seasonality affects business. But what exactly is seasonality? According to Ronald Larson it is the “systematic, although not necessarily regular or unchanging, intra-year movement that is caused by climatic changes, timing of religious festivals, business practices, and expectations and gives rise to the spectral peaks around the seasonal frequency and its harmonics” (1997, p. 38). Seasonality can be a hindrance to restaurants that are not ready for it. There are a few answers to dealing with seasonality and even using it to the advantage of fast food and full service restaurants alike. This paper will look at the problems inherent in our naturally seasonal culture and then present several areas in which restaurants can manipulate their marketing and operations in order

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