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% in…

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…

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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…

Our good friend Scott Hume ran a very interesting item in the Sept. 5 issue of his Burger Business e-newsletter. He reported that customer satisfaction with limited-service restaurants in the United Kingdom reached parity for the first time in satisfaction with full-service concepts, according to research from the National Customer Satisfaction Index. The research group…

Overall food prices at the wholesale level fell for the second month in a row, according the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index, released Sept. 13. While the index for so-called finished foods rose 0.6% in August, the index tracking prices of intermediate foods and feeds dropped 2.3%, while the…