Mia Shagen has delivered for DoorDash via electric bicycle and scooter since 2020. She moves between cities throughout the year but has always called Seattle her home. She isn’t sure she can stay, though. Shagen says she’s never made so little delivering for DoorDash. Take Wednesday, Aug. 14: Shagen worked five and a half hours, …
Continue reading “Delivery fees have Seattle diners, drivers and restaurants reeling”
Quick-service restaurants (QSR) are locked in a fierce “value war,” offering cash-strapped consumers $5 meal deals or even better bargains to maintain their market share. This battle for value has intensified as QSR executives recognize that low- and mid-tier households have been financially squeezed by the Biden-Harris economy. With elevated inflation, high interest rates, depleted savings, …
The pandemic and its aftermath continue to victimize local chains, even those with strong reputations and national notoriety. The latest is Melt Bar & Grilled, a grilled cheese concept founded in 2006 that operates four locations in Ohio. The company, which at one point was featured on both the Food Network and the Travel Channel, …
Continue reading “More small restaurant chains file for bankruptcy”
Rubio’s Coastal Grill, the long-struggling fast-casual chain that just closed a third of its restaurants, on Wednesday declared bankruptcy for the second time in four years, saying the operating environment has grown too difficult, particularly in California. The fast-casual taco chain said it plans to use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to oversee a sale process. Rubio’s …
What’s for dinner? For an increasing number of Americans, especially households making less than $150,000 a year, the answer doesn’t involve going to a restaurant. And when people do go out to eat, they are spending less money. Battered by higher-than-normal food prices, some consumers are pulling back on their spending — and restaurants are feeling …
Continue reading “Dining out is increasingly a domain of the wealthy. Restaurants are feeling it.”
You can get a really good idea how the U.S. economy is doing by watching restaurants in your area. When the economy is booming, restaurant parking lots are full and chains are feverishly establishing new locations. But when the economy is struggling, restaurants get a lot less traffic and poor performing locations get shut down. …
forecast gross bookings below Wall Street expectations, sending its shares down 9% and putting the ride-share and food delivery company on course to shed more than $10 billion in market value. Uber’s disappointing forecast was in sharp contrast to an upbeat guidance late on Tuesday from smaller rival Lyft, which lifted its shares up 8%. …
Continue reading “Uber shares tumble as weaker ride-share demand hurts Q2 forecast”
Instacart has teamed with Uber to offer its customers restaurant deliveries via Uber Eats. The collaboration, announced Tuesday (May 7) and due to roll out in the weeks ahead, lets Instacart customers order from a wide range of restaurants using a new “Restaurants” tab on the company’s app. “Through this partnership, Instacart customers now have access to both the best online …
Continue reading “Instacart Brings Groceries and Restaurant Food Together With Uber Eats Deal”
This is the monthly GuestXM restaurant report from Black Box Intelligence: February provided a much clearer picture of the current state of the restaurant industry after January’s noisy data painted a much bleaker (albeit inaccurate) picture. Same-store sales growth for restaurants was -0.6% in February. Despite the very robust improvement of 4.0 percentage points in the year-over-year …
Continue reading “Data shows expected softening in restaurant sales may be here”
Scott Lawton isn’t a big fan of many of the service charges he’s been seeing, at restaurants and in other industries. And yet bartaco, the 37-unit chain where he’s the CEO, added an 18% surcharge at its location in Denver last year. To Lawton, he didn’t have much of a choice. When the minimum wage …
Continue reading “Restaurants keep adding service fees, even as customers say they don’t like them”
