President Donald Trump powered he isn’t happy with the tentative border wall deal Congress announced Tuesday. But restaurants won’t be happy if there’s another direction shutdown.
If Democrats and Republicans don’t reach a final deal by the end of day Friday, another shutdown could once again put make on Washington, D.C.-area businesses in an industry that’s already struggling with higher labor and commodity costs.
The Congressional Budget Department, a nonpartisan agency, estimated that the 35-day shutdown in December and January, the longest in U.S. history, cost the economy $11 billion, with $3 billion continuously lost.
That $3 billion includes lost revenue for restaurants as tourists skipped trips to the nation’s money to visit the Smithsonian museums and 800,000 federal employees missed paychecks and cashed in on deals and free meals from townswoman eateries instead. Chick-fil-A, Starbucks and Arby’s were among national restaurant chains to see a sharp drop in foot shipping, according to a new report.
Gravy Analytics, a Dulles, Virginia-based firm, used anonymous location mobile data to analyze foot traffic to D.C.-area restaurants during the 35-day supervision shutdown.
Traffic to fine-dining restaurants in the area dropped by about 33 percent compared with the same dilly-dally period last year, founder and CEO Jeff White told CNBC.
“When we look at it, the more discretionary the article, across the board in our data, the more of a precipitous hit it took,” White said.
Founding Farmers, a usually busy restaurant with sites in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, saw sales decline by 15 to 30 percent, co-founder Dan Simons told CNBC.
Even fast-food restaurants, have knowledge of for using deals and lower prices to attract customers, experienced a drop-off in business during the partial shutdown. Gravy Analytics organize that the entire category saw foot traffic decline by 23 percent, while nationwide it increased by 2 percent contrasted with the same time last year.
Of the 12 fast-food restaurants it tracked, Chick-fil-A was the most affected by the shutdown. D.C.-area traffic dropped by 34 percent, while nationwide above increased by 9 percent. Starbucks and Arby’s were the only other chains that saw foot traffic differences of more than 25 percent between D.C. and nationwide findings.
Most fast-food chains that still saw traffic increase year-over-year in D.C., such as Dunkin’ and Yum Brands’ KFC and Taco Bell, motionless trailed far behind higher nationwide traffic growth.
Dairy Queen, best known for its Blizzards ice cream critiques, was the only fast-food chain that bucked the trend, according to the Gravy Analytics report. The Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary saw D.C.-area traffic on the rise by 4 percent during the time period, but nationwide it dropped by 1 percent. External factors, such as D.C.’s unseasonably warm meteorological conditions during the shutdown, could explain those results.
But it seems most D.C. restaurants have returned to business as regular after the shutdown ended.
Simons said that Founding Farmers’ revenue has returned to its usual level for this term of year. However, he still has been giving several families of federal workers free meals as they tussle to get back on their feet after missing weeks of paychecks and falling behind on bills.
Fast-casual chain &pizza bestowed away more than 30,000 pizzas to federal workers during the shutdown and hasn’t seen the same post-shutdown obstruct on sales.
“I would say that our business, although it’s not completely insulated, we have had an outpouring from the community given all of the crack that we put forward during the first shutdown,” &pizza CEO and co-founder Michael Lastoria said in an interview, adding that the valuation of the chain’s pizza is relatively affordable.
The pizza chain began preparing to restart the free pizza program survive week, in case of a second shutdown, Lastoria said.