Want Some Fries With That? Fast-Food’s Appetizing System-Wide Sales

While the pandemic has been a particularly challenging time for the restaurant industry, a look at Visible Alpha’s Restaurant KPI Forecasts dashboard shows some encouraging news for quick-service restaurants such as McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), Yum! Brands (NYSE:YUM), Restaurants Brands International (NYSE:QSR), Domino’s (NYSE:DPZ), and Wendy’s (NASDAQ:WEN), among others. We see from the dashboard table data below that many restaurants had rough times during the height of Covid-19 last year. However, analysts expect many of these restaurants, particularly quick-service brands, to see their 2021 system-wide sales not only recover, but also exceed pre-pandemic levels.

In addition to our Visible Alpha dashboard and platform data, industry reports and media also seem to support this. According to Restaurants Brands International’s 2Q 2021 investor update, their year-over-year increase in total revenue was primarily driven by an increase in system-wide sales (sales revenue of company and franchise-owned stores), which saw an upward growth of 37.4% year-on-year, and 12.79% quarter-on-quarter. For this fast-food company, and others, the revenue comeback and profitability rebound appears to be driven by a variety of factors, from online and mobile ordering to drive-thru services, to technology advances. A recent article in QSR magazine, “Quick-Service Restaurants Ready for Post-Pandemic Norms”, points out that in addition to “drive-thrus and delivery services via online and mobile ordering….continuing to reshape the industry….technology is increasingly important as restaurants look to create more efficiencies, whether in drive-thru lines or in the kitchens. Brands like McDonald’s and White Castle look to fill drive-thru orders more quickly and accurately with the help of artificial intelligence, and efforts to completely automate lanes and kiosks are stepping up.”

A deeper dive into the system-wide sales forecasts of a few of Restaurant Brands Internationals’ individual chains shows examples of these recovery stories. Burger King’s (BK) year-on-year growth this quarter (2Q21) was 42.55%, with QoQ growth of 13.73%. Tim Horton’s (TH) YoY was 47.74% with a QoQ growth of 18.71%. In addition, as we see from the Visible Alpha platform view, Popeye’s (PKLI) delivered impressive system-wide sales not only this year but also during 2020, with its popular chicken sandwich helping to avoid a pandemic dip.

Learn more about revenue drivers and other KPIs in the restaurant industry, as well as forecasts across other industries, by visiting Visible Alpha’s KPI Dashboards. For a primer on the restaurant industry, featuring key metrics that will aid in identifying trends to project future company performance, please visit our Guide to Restaurant KPIs.