More consumers late last year chose to spend more when dining out, especially in less expensive restaurants, a new report on fourth quarter restaurant spending suggests.
Capital Access Network Inc. released its Small Business Credit Sales Report Jan. 19. The report analyzes data gleaned from credit and signature-debit transactions made at more than 50,000 merchants in the New York-based company’s network.
No specific transaction information is noted in the report, just percentage differences.
All but the most expensive restaurants–those with average tickets of $100 or more–experienced increases in credit and signature-debit card spending during the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2009.
The most-affordable restaurants–those with average tickets of $25–reported the largest quarterly growth rate in card sales at 4.24%, Lorimer says. Restaurants with an average ticket of $25 to $50 experienced a 0.39% rise in card sales, while those with average tickets between $50 and $100 experienced a 2.36% increase, the data show.
But higher-end restaurants with larger ticket sizes saw their card sales drop 1.06%, the report shows.
“Over time, we have seen less-expensive restaurants fare a little better than their more-expensive counterparts,” Mark Lorimer, Capital Access Network chief marketing officer, tells PaymentsSource.
Card spending at retailers, not including restaurants, was down 5.78% during the quarter from a year earlier, Lorimer says. That drop, however, represented the lowest decline in the past two years, he notes.
The largest decline in the past two years occurred in the third quarter of 2009, when the report showed a 14.8% decrease in card sales compared with the same period the previous year, Capital Access says.
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