• October 12, 2010

U.S. per-person consumer spending in restaurants and commercial foodservice outlets increased 1.9% in this year's second quarter, despite a 1.5% decline in traffic, according to The NPD Group's food market research. The average U.S. check size was $5.94.

Although restaurant/foodservice visits are still down in most countries around the world, traffic jumped 13% in China, and 0.5% in Canada, NPD reports. 

Small increases in per-person spending were also seen in China (2.4%), Canada (2.1%), the U.K. (2.2%), Germany (1.5%), Italy (0.5%) and Spain (0.3%). In France, traffic was flat and per-person spending was down 0.5%. Japan also saw flat traffic, but a 3.1% decline in spending.

"Around the world, most of our analysts describe their economic environment and industry performance as 'not so good, but not as bad as it was before,'" summed up Bob O'Brien, NPD SVP of global foodservice.