---
title: "December Restaurant Sales Slip With Omicron Variant and Inflation to Blame"
url: https://burnaze.com/article/9ca10c81-29e2-45a6-b890-90553f4c5d62
source: "1851 Franchise"
original_url: https://1851franchise.com/december-restaurant-sales-slip-with-omicron-variant-and-inflation-to-blame-2717802
category: "Restaurants"
industry: "Restaurants"
topics: ["Operations"]
published: 2022-01-21T20:15:00.000Z
modified: 2026-11-01T02:12:13.588Z
image: https://newimage.1851franchise.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=85,format=webp,width=1280,height=720/story/featureImage/2be6671320a6df56f63b3d1f08a7e41b3788.jpg
---

# December Restaurant Sales Slip With Omicron Variant and Inflation to Blame

**TL;DR:** Restaurant sales growth slowed in December 2021 due to rising inflation and the effects of the omicron variant, with sales growing 4.1% compared to 8.4% in November. The sales growth was the weakest since March 2021, according to Nation's Restaurant News.

*originally published in 1851 Franchise on 2022-01-21. [Read the original](https://1851franchise.com/december-restaurant-sales-slip-with-omicron-variant-and-inflation-to-blame-2717802).*

## Story

The new Black Box Intelligence report on restaurant sales for December 2021 showed disappointing results. According to the report, sales grew 4.1% in December, compared to 8.4% growth in November. The reason for the slowed growth was attributed to continued rising inflation as well as the effects of the omicron variant.

Nation's Restaurant News reported that these numbers are the weakest month for the industry since it reported a 2.7% sales growth in March 2021.

“A significant portion of this sales and traffic growth decline can be attributed to the end-of-year holidays falling during the weekend, which erased some potentially strong weekend sales at the end of 2021,” Nation’s Restaurant News reported. “The data also suggests other factors are at play behind the latest sales stumble, such as concerns about the omicron variant of COVID-19 or consumer pullback in response to historically high inflation rates and skyrocketing restaurant guest checks.”

## Entities

- 1851 Franchise (publication)
- Restaurants (sector)
- Nation's Restaurant News (publication)
- restaurant sales (topic)
- inflation (topic)
- Black Box Intelligence (company)
- omicron variant (topic)

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Originally reported by 1851 Franchise (https://1851franchise.com/december-restaurant-sales-slip-with-omicron-variant-and-inflation-to-blame-2717802). Summarized by Burnaze (https://burnaze.com/article/9ca10c81-29e2-45a6-b890-90553f4c5d62).