As we write this, it looks increasingly possible that Congress will fail to pass legislation to increase the U.S. federal debt ceiling or restart the federal government, which has been in a partial shutdown since Oct. 1.We said in our annual forecast back in August that we would be confidently predicting faster equipment and supplies…

Writing FER Fortnightly Economic Report is more challenging this week in part because we are missing a number of key government reports. Among them are the monthly report on U.S. employment, the Producer Price Index and the Consumer Price Index. Nearly all of the statisticians at the Dept. of Commerce, the Bureau of Labor Statistics,…

Forecasts for growth of real GDP in the U.S. held steady in the latest consensus forecasts of economists polled by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. The forecast of growth of disposable personal income and consumer spending next year did deteriorate slightly. The current forecast for real GDP growth remained at 1.6% for this year and 2.6%…

Because the short-term economic outlook is so dicey, what with the federal government partial shutdown and the looming debt-ceiling deadline, we might want to focus on the longer term. Blue Chip Economic Indicators released its latest long-term consensus projections in early October. Most of the important numbers have deteriorated slightly from the forecasts last March.…

All four expectations indicators in the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index were down sharply in the August survey, including plans for capital spending. Still, gains in current same-store sales and traffic kept the decline of the overall RPI to just 0.2 point, to100.5. Any reading above 100 indicates expansion. The index has now been…

The second quarter of 2013 keeps turning out surprisingly robust foodservice data in many ways. We’ve written about the strong gains of the MAFSI Business Barometer and publicly reporting equipment and supplies company revenue growth in the period. Now the

The analysts at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the Albany, N.Y.-based research group, actually call the third consecutive quarter of strong growth in state revenues a “temporary bubble.” Preliminary data from 46 states has overall state revenues up 11% in the second quarter 2013 vs. the same quarter last year. A big factor in the…

Foodservice Equipment Reports’ entire 2014 forecast package is available for just $1,295. It includes eight PowerPoint decks covering data and analysis of macro-economic, operator and materials-price trends as they impact the foodservice E&S market, as well as exclusive information on E&S manufacturer list-price trends from AutoQuotes Inc. FER‘s annual rankings of the top U.S. E&S…

The NPD Group has issued a new research report that details how prepared food offerings at retail outlets such as supermarkets are eating into restaurants’ lunch and dinner traffic. The report, “The Retail Prepared Foods Market: Assessing the Competition,” says visits for prepared foods at retail outlets at lunch have soared 29% since 2008, while…

As we reported two weeks ago in FER Fortnightly, sales of equipment and supplies surged in the second quarter of this year, catching us very much by surprise. The MAFSI Barometer, a reflection of manufacturers’ rep sales trends, jumped 6.1%, a record quarterly gain for the 11-year-old index. Combined revenues at the seven publicly reporting…