Restaurants and Bar Sales Down on Super Bowl Sunday

CHICAGO - Restaurant and bar sales during Super Bowl Sunday were down nearly six percent compared to last year, according to Technomic, Inc., a restaurant research firm.

“The Super Bowl is the first big event of the New Year, and we had hoped to see people returning to bars and restaurants,” said David Henkes, Vice President at Technomic and leader of the firm’s beverage alcohol practice. “This is the first true indicator for 2010 that restaurants and bars are still struggling, and it corresponds to our forecast for another down year for the foodservice industry.”

While overall revenues in restaurants and bars were down 5.5 percent, the drop was greater for food. Alcohol sales actually declined by 0.7 percent, indicating that more people cut back on food during the Super Bowl than cut back on alcohol.

Sales data was collected from nearly 3,000 restaurants and bars throughout the nation, collected and maintained by GuestMetrics, a provider of data mining services for the hospitality industry.