All things considered, August was an awesome month for DC area restaurants. Open restaurant sales climbed to -30.9% year-over-year, after ending July at -42.6%. Full-service made major moves this month with almost a 12% climb up from July year-over-year sales.
With a month full of sunshine and a couple of absolutely beautiful days, patio dining flourished, with hopefully more to come as fall weather rolls in. We saw people returning to the city and families treating themselves to the last days of summer before school started, all contributing to a very promising month overall.
We also saw a drop in third-party delivery services – reaching almost a pre-pandemic level. Delivery makes up an average of 15.4% of a DMV restaurant’s sales – down from a pandemic high of 40% in back in May. With Sales up and deliveries as a percent of sales down, that means we have more walk-in traffic! Whether it is pick up or sit down – it is not sales dependent on third party delivery. So hooray for more profitable sales!
* We removed August 30 and 31 because last year those dates fell over Labor Day weekend, this year they did not, skewing the numbers too much to include in these graphs.
About these metrics: The MarginEdge monthly snapshot of DC Metro restaurant sales is based on a sampling of 300+ area restaurants ranging from fast-casual to full-service.