SALT LAKE CITY – After
months of belt tightening as the country slowly lumbers out of a recession,
Americans are eating out more, USA Today reports. Restaurant sales topped $45
billion last month, a $200 million seasonally adjusted jump from the previous
record in December 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That’s welcome news for
restaurants and other purveyors of prepared food. “After totaling nearly $45.7
billion in December, eating and drinking place sales were dampened somewhat
during the first three months of 2013, likely due in part to the impact of the
payroll tax hike,” said Bruce Grindy, chief economist with the National
Restaurant Association, in his analysis of those figures. The association
predicts those numbers will continue to increase in the coming months.
“These new survey results
suggest that once consumers are feeling more confident about their personal
financial situation, they will be primed to burn off some of their accumulated
pent-up demand for restaurants,” wrote Grindy in his report.
Those figures come as a
new Gallup poll indicates that consumers are feeling less thrifty than a few
years ago, with more than a quarter (26%) of Americans opening their wallets
more than before. Forty-one percent of Americans are “spending less money”
compared with 57% in 2010, according to the annual Economy and Personal Finance
survey by Gallup.