Restaurants Experience Jump in Sales After Stimulus Checks Arrive

This week, the first recipients of the CARES Act’s stimulus checks — those who had already filed their 2019 tax returns and elected to receive their returns via direct deposit — received their payments. That money may already be providing a boost to local economies.

On Thursday, several restaurant operators told Restaurant Business that they experience a spike in sales coinciding with the delivery of the first stimulus checks.

> **Slapfish restaurants in Huntington Beach, Calif., saw sales jump 30% to 40% year over year Wednesday, said Andrew Gruel, the chain’s founder and executive chef, in an interview. They are up 65% over last week.**A franchisee-owned location in Indiana is up almost $4,000 this week and has seen sales increase every week recently.

Those are promising early signs that the stimulus checks are working as intended — not a guaranteed outcome given the current retail climate, in which most storefronts are closed and consumers are being asked to stay home. That success can likely be attributed to timing, with deposits arriving a little more than a month after some cities issued the first social-distancing orders.

> [Consumers have] also grown more accustomed to leaving their homes and getting takeout. As it was, sales had clearly hit a bottom in late March and were showing signs of life early on in April, based on anecdotal evidence from operators and sales figures from Black Box Intelligence.

Of course, it’s still too early to measure the success of the stimulus checks, which haven’t even reached many Americans yet. But any boost for the brutalized hospitality sector is encouraging.