Two weeks back, we wrote about the weak set of Q1 sales results from McDonald’s , Domino’s , Chipotle , Wendy’s, Shake Shack, and others. Last week, the wipeout in fast food (called limited service in industry lingo) broadened to include Sweet Green, Papa John’s, and Restaurant Brands International (i.e. Burger King). We wrote in our earlier articles that the softness was the result of consumer fatigue following compounding inflation and too many price increases by limited-service which has resulted in share-of-stomach shifting from away-from-home consumption to at-home (or grocery).

Better-than-expected quarterly results from Savers Value Village and ThredUp, plus the threat of inflation from tariffs, motivated us to take a look at foot traffic for the secondhand retail sector and its major players. As a reminder, the fiscal stimulus of ’21 and the bout of inflation in ’22 produced very strong years for the sector. So much so that those good times compelled ThredUp to IPO in ’21 and Savers in ’23.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights At a time when many are concerned about a recession and a cutback in consumer spending, Disney once again demonstrated that it is a special place in consumers’ lives and an exceptional business. Domestic park attendance inflected by +300bps to +1% growth. Advan data in the table below shows that the Orlando parks, especially Magic Kingdom, drove the acceleration as hurricanes weren’t disruptive in the period, like the prior quarter.

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By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Amazon’s Q1 results and guidance for Q2 reflect what we are broadly witnessing – relatively stable demand for goods, some pull-forward effects ahead of tariffs, and a lot of uncertainty. Including Leap Year, the North American retail business slowed about -400 bps QoQ to around +8% unit growth and +6% $-volume growth, per our estimate. Average ticket fell -200 bps as: (1) Amazon and its third-party sellers have been highlighting savings and lower prices, and (2) consumables (which are generally lower-priced items) grew at +12%, which is twice the rate of general merchandise (our estimate).

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Floor & Décor Holdings Q1 results showed stability in earnings despite a challenging housing market. However, those challenges combined with the added pressures from tariffs led management to reduce its store openings plan for 2025 from 25 to 20. CEO Tom Taylor said, “If economic conditions worsen from our current expectations, we have the ability to further reduce fiscal 2025 openings.” On the outlook, Taylor said, “This is a bit of unprecedented times.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights McDonald’s US “comp-sales” declined -3.6%, or roughly -2.6% excluding Leap Day. The -2.6% figure was below expectations (+0.7%) and Advan’s estimate* (-1.2% +/-0.8%) – as such, something in the “environment” changed (that’s why you have errors in forecasts such as this that are based upon-ML). Advan also shows that McDonald’s traffic decelerated further (-20 bps) and that average check also softened. We’ve been writing about the weak year-to-date trend for the limited-serve industry and put out stories on misses by Chipotle and Domino’s .

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Sprouts Farmers Market again produced stellar quarterly results; comp-sales increased +11.7% (vs. Advan’s estimate* of +11.9%) and management guided Q2 for a 6.5% - 8.5% increase. We take that outlook to be “conservative” as Advan’s ML estimate* is +8.8%, i.e. something would materially need to change in the external environment for them to not beat their guidance. The +11.9% for Q1 and +8.8% for Q2 embed a 140bps improvement in the 3-year trend.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Polaris makes snowmobiles, motorcycles, ATVs, and power boats – all big-ticket discretionary goods, a category of consumer expenditure that has been in a world of hurt following a pandemic / fiscal stimulus fueled super-cycle in 2021 / ‘22. Higher interest rates (vis-a-vis financing) has also been a headwind during the downturn. Looking at personal consumption expenditure from the BEA, pleasure boats are down -10% from peak and RVs are down -25%.

By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights In the context of ongoing weak earnings results for Kraft Heinz and other branded food names, we took a deeper look into Trader Joe’s and Aldi’s traffic growth. Recall that one of our central themes is that industry growth of food-at-home will be driven by private brands and those retailers that excel at it. That’s principally the reason behind the -7% decline in volume and revenue for Kraft’s North American business segment in Q1.