Restaurant Industry Report from Square | Hacker News Reader

Restaurant Industry Report from Square

squareup.com

15 pointsarmdave17 comments

Light read with some interesting factoids. Despite the stock market hitting all-time highs, consumer confidence is low, as indicated by decreasing tips. The gap between QSRs and sit-down restaurants is also expanding in terms of efficiencies and margins.

> Despite the stock market hitting all-time highs, consumer confidence is low

This isn't that surprising. Stock prices are pretty well disconnected from real day-to-day economics that normal people deal with.

>Stock prices are pretty well disconnected from real day-to-day economics that normal people deal with.

No, something happened post covid. Previously you could predict consumer sentiment pretty well by combining several economic figures, but after covid that model broke.

https://www.econlib.org/why-so-sad/

But stock price alone has never been a strong signal about consumer sentiment, pre-covid or post. It's a strong signal about investor sentiment, but the things that are good for stock prices have always been very different from the things that are good for regular people.

I suspect decreasing tips also has a lot to do with tip exhaustion, I think it's becoming increasingly acceptable (at least in my circles) to hit the "custom" option and put in a smaller-that-suggested tip (or even nothing at all).

It's tough to continue to do percentage based tips when the prices have become so high.

Or when youre at a self serve kiosk

Ironically, those stupid tip kiosks have cost severs tip amountage with me

I used to drink a fair bit, so at the end of a tab, I did not want to do arithmetic and would just put an “easy” number that looked good. This could often be upwards of 35%

But if you stick a touch screen in my face with even easier, one-two taps on a preselected amount, I’ll go with that.

Also I’ve accidentally no tipped a few times with them because I get frustrated with the incessant screens asking about receipts, emails, etc. that I just click past the tip screen.

Maybe this has more to do with the volume of stores now using Square? Many places I will never tip have now been requesting a percentage.

I've stopped tipping through the POS devices entirely. Now when I tip, it's in cash and an amount I've decided on, not an amount the business is trying to talk me into. I also have reverted to only tipping for traditionally tipped stuff, not the everyone and their dog who asks.

Yeah, there are two (nothing special) places near me whose default tip options are 25, 30, 35% and custom.

For counter service, not table.

Knowing myself, I would probably stop going to these places for this reason alone.

I'm hopeful that with the aggressive digital tipping options being set to 20%, 30% and 40% Other that people will get exhausted and stop tipping altogether.

With many states implementing $15 minimum wages, it no longer makes sense that tipping would "make up for the difference" between the $7.25 and inflation that people felt guilty about. With $15 minimum wages, we can go back to the days when 10% was "nice service, thank you!" and be done. Good riddance to the extortion.

As a sidenote, minimum wages were never living wages. If you want to see "living wages" stop outsourcing and sending jobs overseas. Low value add service jobs were never going to replace mid-skilled jobs that people were happy to send overseas in order to have $50 sneakers and $10 tee-shirts. Whelp, that undermined everyone's jobs --more people needing SNAP means more taxes for those who still have work...

Does this data get sold to hedge funds or other groups? Companies that process large amounts of purchases must have some of the most accurate data sets on consumer spending that can exist, and should be able to get that data up to date for a time period much faster than any company or gov could compile a survey. Amazon, Shopify, Square, Visa, Mastercard, etc they could all easily calculate inflation easier and more accurately than the gov.

Yes(not specifically saying this data does - just that very similar data is essential to many HFs/QHFs). Search alternative market data.

Interesting that square is allowed (and able to) report on this.

So apparently they are processing data like what milk goes in the coffee and can freely(-ish) do what they want with it

“Based on your location we recommend you view this on our Australian site”

“404”

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