Restaurants NAICS 722511, 722513, 722514

May 14, 2025 - Reservation Scalping

• As demand for hard-to-get reservations has grown, the restaurant industry’s equivalent of ticket scalpers have been scooping up reservations and selling them online, the National Restaurant Association reports. Technology enables individuals and companies to scrape reservations from legitimate restaurant websites or partner reservation sites and then sell them on unauthorized online resale sites and social media, per the NRA. The practice is creating challenges for restaurants, like costly no-shows, staffing needs to manage the expectations of customers who purchase these third-party reservations, and potential damage to their brand. Amid rising frustration from diners and restaurant operators, state governments have begun working with the restaurant industry to create a regulatory framework to fix the system by returning control of reservations to restaurants. A recent survey of diners at full-service restaurants found nearly 2 in 5 were aware of third-party websites that charge for reservations and nearly 15% said they’d paid for a reservation.
• Restaurants added a net 16,600 jobs in April, according to preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job gains came despite rising uncertainty that kept consumers from visiting as frequently. (In April, restaurant industry bellwether McDonald’s reported a 3.6% year-over-year decline in first quarter same-store sales and cited reduced spending by low-income consumers.) April marked the second straight month for restaurant job gains, following about 30,000 new jobs added in March, and is a rebound from a loss of 28,300 jobs in February and 27,000 in January — the weakest two-month period for the industry in over four years, according to the National Restaurant Association. Despite recent job gains, payrolls were still down 19,000 jobs since the beginning of the year. The average industry wage rose 5% YoY in March to a new high of $18.95 per hour, per the BLS.

• The dramatic drop in consumer confidence is expected to cause diners to pull back on spending, presenting restaurants with ongoing challenges amid a deteriorating economic landscape, Nation’s Restaurant News reports. In April, consumer confidence fell off a cliff according to the University of Michigan, whose consumer confidence index fell 11% for the month and is down 30% over the past five months as US consumers have grown increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for unemployment and worried about more inflation. Restaurants rely on discretionary spending. When consumers feel stressed they skip dining out and eat at home instead. The U of M survey shows that Trump’s tariff pronouncements, along with the severe reaction of the stock and bond markets, are taking their toll on US consumers.
• To combat high turnover among tipped servers, full-service restaurant operators may want to consider adding earned wage access to their menu of employee benefits, new research commissioned by DailyPay and conducted by The Harris Poll shows. High employee turnover is a major industry pain point. Across the restaurant industry, the average employee tenure is just 110 days, a turnover rate of 41% for front-of-house workers. Earned wage access (EWA) allows employees to draw a portion of their earned wages before their scheduled payday. According to the data, nearly two-thirds (63%) of millennial tipped hourly service industry workers say their overall quality of life and mental health would improve if they had access to their hourly pay when they earned it. Access to EWA even outperformed not being taxed on their tips (60%), having flexible work schedules (60%), or interest rates dropping (36%), according to the poll.