January 2024 National Restaurant Sales Metrics

National restaurant sales for January 2024 are in for Fast Casual and Full Service segments.  

Fast Casual ended the month with +1% growth compared to January 2023's numbers and Full Service was not far behind with -2%. While January's numbers might look a little scary, it's important to check out the beginning of the chart for January 2023's sales which had impressive growth. So even with 1% and -2%, January 2024 is also 14% up for Fast Casual and 18% up for Full Service from January 2022's numbers.

Blood oranges topped our Droppers list at an average -38% price drop across MarginEdge customers in January, while Japanese cucumbers rose +58% to the top of our Movers list. Persian cucumbers also made the top 5, while English/European and conventional cucumbers just missed the cut. Across the board, January was a costly month for Cucumi.  

The average food category costs as a percentage of sales increased slightly from last month for MarginEdge customers, with food costs averaging 30% of sales.

Regionally, the Midwest and South ended January on a positive note, while all regions performed similarly throughout the month. 

We are optimistically looking forward to seeing how Valentine's Day and the weekend before it perform this February, as the preceding weekend saw higher sales than the actual day last year. We'll see you in March!