Black Box Intelligence

Recent shifts in both domestic and international factors are reshaping guest behavior in U.S. restaurants...

🇺🇸 Domestic boosts with short lifespans – The Social Security Fairness Act provided a temporary lift in consumer spending, particularly in regions with older populations with fixed incomes. But like many stimulus effects, the bump faded quickly.

🌍 Tourism turbulence – New U.S. administration policies, including potential tariffs and a proposed visa fee, are dampening international travel. Destination markets like Las Vegas are feeling the pinch in restaurant traffic.

⛽ Gas prices as a tailwind – Lower fuel costs are putting more discretionary income in guests’ pockets, boosting visits. But the impact isn’t universal:

Lower gas prices 🟰 Fine dining sees some wins as people tend to visit experience-driven segments. Meanwhile, Family and Casual Dining showed a negative correlation.

📊 In a volatile environment, tracking the why behind traffic trends is critical.

There has been considerable speculation about the impact of the new administration’s policies. This includes potential tariffs, cutting the budget on marketing U.S. destinations overseas, and a newly announced $250 Visa Integrity fee, which will affect International travel to the United States.

Miami, the city with the most international travelers per resident, has also struggled. However, it’s less dramatic than Las Vegas in 2025. Its same-store traffic is down -2.3% year over year, -0.4% better than the national industry benchmark.

Conversely, San Francisco and Orlando mildly outperformed the national benchmark. Each put up -1.4% traffic for 2025 to date, compared with 1.9% for the country.

However, Orlando’s yearly growth numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. This is because they are lapping over a particularly poor first half of 2024 (-4.3% traffic in Q1 2024 and -4.9% traffic in Q2 2024).

To add a little context, Orlando’s 2-year traffic growth numbers are underperforming the rest of the country (-5.9% for Orlando and -4.9% for the Nation).

Honolulu paints an entirely different picture altogether. Their restaurant traffic growth is actually positive in 2025 to date at 0.8%.

This aligns with the Hawaiian Department of Tourism’s data, which shows that visitor numbers increased in April and May.

Despite a rocky start to the year... with weather disruptions, inflation fears, and a dip in consumer sentiment😵‍💫... restaurant consumers are showing up. 👇

And they’re speaking clearly with their wallets. 💳🍽️

According to Black Box Intelligence, comp sales and traffic are on the rise, with June posting the best comp sales in 18 months and best traffic in two years (excluding seasonal outliers).

But that's not a blanket win for everyone...

📊 So, what does this mean for restaurant leaders?

→ Understanding consumer behavior isn’t optional anymore👉 it’s your edge.
→ The brands winning today are meeting guests where they are: with value🤑, quality🍽️, and compelling experiences🤝.
→ Your growth strategy in the back half of 2025 must account for shifting traffic patterns and the rise of category crossovers🌱.

At Black Box, we’re here to help you dig beneath the headlines and turn insights into action.

🤔 We’d love to hear from you:
How are you seeing these trends play out in your locations?
Are you adjusting your strategy for Q4 based on this momentum?

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Customer reviews hold incredible power. Average Star Ratings (ASR) are more than just numbers for restaurant brands.

They can determine whether your brand is a thriving business or just one that survives.

We categorized online reviews with positive attributes (“welcome,” “friendly”) and negative ones (“rude,” “unprofessional”). Based on these terms, we calculated a “hospitality” net sentiment score (NSS).

We found that restaurants with stronger NSS outperformed the rest of the market by 2.4% in sales growth and 1.8% in traffic growth.

Dive deeper into ASR 🏊‍♂️ https://blackboxintelligence.com/asr-hub/

If you could turn data mayhem into guest experience mastery- what would that look like?

🔍 Ops leaders instantly spot which regions need intervention
🧭 GMs get timely, targeted coaching insights
📲 Marketing teams localize campaigns based on actual guest sentiment
🧑‍🏫 Training programs focus on the issues that matter most to guests
👁️ Executive teams see a full, accurate snapshot of brand health- any time, from anywhere

Sounds like a dream? Your guests are giving you feedback that feels nonstop and from every direction, making it feel impossible… but it’s not.

With the right tools, your entire organization can move from reactive to proactive ▶️ together.

Enter Guest Intelligence.

Guest Intelligence is the most complete guest experience solution built for restaurant brands. It combines surveys, reputation management, and deep guest feedback analysis into a single, restaurant-specific platform - so you can capture, analyze, and act on every guest interaction across your business with speed, consistency, and confidence.

Here’s how:
🗳️Survey Studio: Customizable, location and menu-specific digital survey feedback (this marks the formal integration of the Yumpingo product following our acquisition in April).
📲Reputation Hub: Real-time guest review and social sentiment analytics—all in one view.
💬Response Center: Scalable digital reputation tools for managing every guest interaction.
🤖Restaurant-Trained AI: Market-leading insights, smarter actions, and easy-to-use tools.
🕸️Restaurant Performance Network: One-of-a-kind reference point for guest experience, financial and workforce metrics that enables restaurant brands to conclusively answer the question: is it me or the market?

✅Learn more about the NEW complete guest experience solution - now fully integrated: Same Beloved Ingredients. Bigger, Better, Together.

See how the Complete Guest Experience Management Solution can help your Restaurant🖱️https://blackboxintelligence.com/product/guest-intelligence/

In a multi-location world, clarity isn’t optional. It’s your competitive edge.

Siloed feedback channels like generic surveys, star ratings, or social reviews are incredibly valuable. But in isolation, they lack critical context to diagnose what’s wrong and…more importantly…what to do about it.

So – for example – you may miss:
⌛ Timing: Feedback often arrives too late to intervene in the moment.
🌟 Interaction Specifics: Who served the guest? What did they order? Was it dine-in or off-premise?
🔎 Clarity: A 3-star review doesn’t explain a slow cook time or an undertrained host.

The devil is in the details. So, how do you get Real-Time, Location-Specific Intelligence?

Read now: https://blackboxintelligence.com/blog/server-menu-or-market-pinpointing-guest-experience-gaps-in-real-time/

There has been considerable speculation about the impact of the new administration’s policies...

This includes potential tariffs, cutting the budget on marketing U.S. destinations overseas, and a newly announced $250 Visa Integrity fee, which will affect International travel to the United States.

In turn, the restaurant industry is anxiously awaiting news of what to expect.

Based on our data, here are the 2025 travel impacts for restaurants we predict are ahead.

Read now: https://blackboxintelligence.com/blog/plates-passports-pressure-how-2025-travel-could-make-or-break-restaurants/

Let’s be honest about what most multi-unit brands are up against...

👎 Disjointed tech stacks: Survey tools here, review platforms there, endless spreadsheets everywhere
👎Feedback with no context: You see the complaint, but not who it affected or when
👎Teams drowning in data: More feedback, less clarity — and a whole lot of contradictions

The result? Well-meaning teams make decisions based on limited or lagging insights and the guest experience suffers.

More data isn’t helping because it’s scattered, slow, and often contradicts itself.

So, how do you centralize the data in a way to thrive instead of confuse?

Guest Intelligence is a unified platform designed specifically for restaurants, combining digital surveys, reputation management, and powerful feedback analytics: all in one place.

With Guest Intelligence, you can capture, analyze, and respond to every guest interaction across your business quickly, consistently, and with confidence.

Here’s what’s inside:
🗳️ Survey Studio – Fully customizable surveys tailored by location and menu, now seamlessly integrated with the Yumpingo technology we acquired in April.
📲 Reputation Hub – A centralized view of real-time guest reviews and social sentiment.
💬 Response Center – Scalable tools to manage and engage with guest feedback across every channel.
🤖 Restaurant-Trained AI – Smart insights, intuitive tools, and data-driven recommendations purpose-built for restaurants.
🕸️ Restaurant Performance Network – A one-of-a-kind benchmarking tool that helps you determine if it’s your operation—or market conditions—impacting performance, by linking guest experience, financials, and workforce metrics.

Learn more: https://blackboxintelligence.com/blog/why-its-time-to-rethink-guest-feedback-the-complete-guest-experience-solution/