BEIJING, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Major U.S. restaurant chains are paying their price of expanding excessively, as sales data shows that the supply of restaurants seems to surpass demand, the Washington Post reported Friday.
Chipotle, a famous burrito giant, is among the chains that aggressively expanded last year. Even with a food contamination scandal, Chipotle opened 240 locations last fiscal year, and had opened 57 more in the first quarter of this year.
The report pointed out that restaurant visits declined slightly in 2016, following a 1-percent yearly growth before, according to market research firm NPD Group.
Chains like Chipotle wanted to seize the moment when consumers wished to dine out more often, but they fail to notice a key problem of the industry: the supply of restaurants already appears to exceed demand.
Traffic figures collected from some 22,000 restaurants showed a 3.6 percent decline in the first quarter, following a decline that began last year.
Meanwhile, some big-name chains are already making moves to pull back their business. Subway, which has some 27,000 locations, closed hundreds of stores in 2016. McDonald's closed about 200 stores in two years, reporting 14,155 locations in 2016.
So why do consumers dine out less? One of the possible reasons might just be it makes more financial sense. Prices of food at home dropped 1.3 percent in 2016 -- the first decline since 1967 -- while restaurant prices rose 2.6 percent, according to U.S. Agricultural Department.
