It seems like a mixed bag looking at some of the March surveys on consumer confidence and sentiment. A Conference Board survey of consumer confidence released earlier this week showed a slight rebound in March – the first increase on the year – even as many remain skeptical. However, some experts report that the improvement…
Read More »As DDIFO gets ready to (hopefully) resurrect in-person meetings in the coming months, we wanted to share some survey results from the 2022 Global Meetings and Events Forecast. The Forecast annually measures sentiment within the meetings industry relating in-person meeting activities, meeting industry growth, meeting value and trends among other data. Two-thirds of respondents (67%)…
Read More »The fall months brought a trifecta of bad news from an economic standpoint as the number of Americans who quit their jobs in September rose to 3% – the highest rate ever recorded since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began collecting that data two decades ago. The September numbers translate to 4.4 million people,…
Read More »Starbucks Shareholders yesterday rejected an eye-popping executive compensation proposal for the C-Suite that included a $1.86 million payout for CEO Kevin Johnson as a performance bonus for fiscal year 2020 along with $50M in “retention pay” if the CEO were to stick around with the company through fiscal year 2022! Although the rejected resolution was…
Read More »In a notice released yesterday morning, the Department of Labor Employment and Training Division reported that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits jumped again last week to 885,000, the highest weekly total since September. Claims were 23,000 higher than the previous week’s figures and come as COVID-19 cases continue to surge across the…
Read More »Notwithstanding the spike in coronavirus infections that we’re seeing across the country over the past few weeks, optimism rose 12 points among small business owners for the fourth quarter of 2020 according to new polling from the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Survey. The 4th quarter score of 72 is up 12 points from the prior…
Read More »This week Dunkin Brands CFO Kate Jaspon was present at the JP Morgan Consumer Conference and our DDIFO Restaurant Analyst John Gordon of Pacific Management Consulting Group reports she answered detailed questions and gave a good outline of current and future initiatives. While not detailing same-store sales numbers, she indicated consumers are out more and…
Read More »In the Dunkin’ Q1 earnings call held yesterday, company executives described the positive Dunkin US and Baskin sales momentum the brand had experienced leading into mid-March, only to be knocked down by the Covid 19 impact. By early April, Dunkin US same store sales had fallen to minus 35% but has since improved to almost…
Read More »According to the Center for An Urban Future, the Big Apple got a little smaller in 2019 – at least if you’re measuring it by chain stores. In its twelfth annual ranking of national retailers, State of the Chains, 2019, the Center reports that New York City lost 304 store locations in the year just…
Read More »It’s official, with October job growth numbers, US employers have added jobs to their payrolls for 109 months straight – the longest stretch of job creation the government began collecting those records in 1939! On average this year, employers have added 167,000 jobs per month! It should be no surprise then that small business optimism…
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