We Are What We Eat - GDP-Wise

 Culver's  Restaurant

Or Hubbard Avenue Grill, Middleton, Wisconsin

Floyd Norris in a New York Times article just published on-line entitled: "In Sit-Down Restaurants, an Economic Indicator" says that current restaurant sales support that the economic recovery is stronger than the GDP figures might indicate:

Over the 12 months through January, sales at what the government calls full-service restaurants were 8.7 percent higher than in the previous 12 months. That was the fastest pace of growth since the late 1990s, when the economy was booming. Moreover, as is seen in the accompanying charts, that rate was much greater than the rate of growth in sales at limited-service restaurants.

Since those numbers became available 20 years ago, that difference has been a reliable indicator of how the economy is going. When times get tough, people may still eat out, but they cut back.

Here are the charts for the article: