The latest Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) showed sales and customer growth losing traction, according to the latest National Restaurant Association Report. Although it was the 19th month in a row that stores experienced net-positive sales, but the numbers put a dampening on operator sentiments:

- December fell to 99.7 RPI, down .2 percent from November. RPI has been below 100 for three months.
- This was the 19th consecutive month that sales grew, but the growth slowed from the previous month. Less than half of restaurateurs reported same-store growth for the 12 month period, down from 55 percent in November. And 38 percent reported lower sales, up from 30 percent previously.
- Customer traffic declined, with 31 percent reporting higher traffic vs. 43 percent in November. Lower traffic was reported by 48 percent vs. 35 percent previously.

The net effect is a generally pessimistic outlook for restaurateurs, only a third of whom expected to have higher sales in the next half year. Among those polled, 83 percent believed the economy would not grow or would get worse in the ensuing six months.

The National Restaurant Association began in 1919, and claims 980,000 restaurant and foodservice outlets among its members, employing a workforce of 13 million people. The organization releases the RPI at the end of every month to gauge restaurant sales trends.

Hudson Riehle, a senior vice president of the Research and Knowledge department at the NRA, called restaurateurs “cautiously optimistic” about near-term sales, while describing their outlook on the economy as a whole as “decidedly pessimistic.”