5 Comments
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Katie's avatar

Always glad to see a myth busted!

Evan's avatar

Really happy to see some actual data and analysis in the discourse, great stuff Mike

John Thacker's avatar

Thanks for the post! I noticed that some people came to a different conclusion using FRED and comparing the Advance Retail Sales: Food Services and Drinking Places numbers to the Advance Retail Sales: Food and Beverage Stores numbers, which theoretically should be comparing eating out of home to eating in home, and found that the former had surpassed the latter. My guess is that at least part of the difference is that the latter is NAICS code 445 and doesn't include 455211 Warehouse Clubs and Supercenters, which covers Sam's Club, Costco, Walmart Supercenter, Super Target, etc., which are substantial sources of groceries these days.

Brent Jacobson's avatar

Well argued! COVID definitely changed our outlook. We were forced to give up restaurants, but then decided we didn’t miss them…the wait, the crappy service, the screwed up orders. Cooking wasn’t so bad once we got back in the groove. We mostly just eat out when we’re traveling, which is enough.

John M's avatar

Good post! What's with that hole in the data between 20k and 25k? Just curious.