November 4/Food & Farm Week -- In perhaps the worst market conditions the restaurant industry has seen in nearly 20 years, full-service restaurants saw some sign of improvement in September. In partnership with GuestMetrics, foodservice industry consultant Technomic finds that nationally, full-service restaurant performance declined 6.3% in September, compared with 12.0% for the month of August.

The monthly SalesMetrics report was designed to report on monthly restaurant sales performance trends. This new report combines actual point-of-sale (POS) data from over 2,700 national full-service independent and chain restaurants. Guest check data is collected, aggregated and analyzed to identify regional sales performance trends, day part, cuisine, guest traffic and average check shifts in consumer usage and spending.