Global 2024 Restaurant Outlook: Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

The restaurant industry has had to endure significant hardships over the past few years— and we believe the restaurant industry will have another difficult year ahead in 2024.

Key Highlights
-- While operating conditions could gradually improve toward the latter part of 2024, our mostly negative outlook reflects our belief that restaurants will have another difficult year ahead as a result of strained consumer purchasing power.
-- We expect persistent pressures and the combined effects of multiple challenging years to still weigh on restaurant companies' credit risk profiles well into 2024.
-- We believe that these negative effects will generally be more meaningful on full-service restaurants versus quick-service establishments.

“Our mostly negative 2024 outlook is relatively consistent across the United States, Canada, and Europe as evidenced by the relatively consistent changes in consumer behaviour observed through 2023,” said Moritz Steinbauer, Senior Vice President and Team Lead, Diversified Industries. “Nevertheless, we do expect to see some differences across these geographies. While restaurants in Canada could be more meaningfully affected by the impacts of aggressive interest rate hikes on consumers' purchasing power, given relatively shorter mortgage terms, restaurants in Europe could see a slower cooling of the inflationary environment.”