Fast Food Tops in Bentonville

If eating habits are telling, then people in Bentonville are always on the go. 

Four of the top 10 restaurants in Bentonville for the first two quarters are fast food concepts. Nos. 5 and 6 are in-store delis at the Wal-Mart Supercenter and Sam’s Club. In fact, there are only two restaurants in Bentonville’s top 10 that don’t classify as fast food: Lin’s Garden Chineese restaurant and the Shogun Steakhouse of Japan. 

The Chick-fil-A restaurant on South Walton Boulevard in Bentonville had $1.2 million in sales from Jan. 1 through June 30 this year. Percent increase numbers for the Chick-fil-A are skewed, however, because it opened in April 2008.

In Fayetteville, the top restaurant by sales also beat Bentonville’s No. 1. The Olive Garden Italian restaurant on North Mall Avenue had $1.85 million in sales for the first two quarters.

The rankings are based on a 1 percent hotel-motel-restaurant, or “hamburger,” tax collected by the cities of Bentonville and Fayetteville for their respective Advertising & Promotion Commissions. Neither Rogers nor Springdale collect the tax, therefore sales numbers for restaurants in those towns cannot be reliably reported. The Business Journal compared sales of restaurants in Bentonville and Fayetteville for the first two quarters of 2009 with the first two quarters of 2008.

The No. 2 dining spot in Fayetteville was the Golden Corral with $1.78 million in sales for the first two quarters. The Golden Corral was No. 1 in sales for the first half of 2008.

Only three of Fayetteville’s top 10 restaurants are considered fast food, with most of the others classified as sit-down casual.

Mark Hufford is the owner-operator of the Chick-fil-A in Bentonville. He said the store does most of its traffic during breakfast and lunch on the weekdays. The restaurant’s proximity to the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. home office drives that business.

Hufford said the industry average for drive-thru traffic is about 60 percent of business, but one recent mid-week lunch rush at his store showed about twice as many patrons chose to stay in their cars.

Chick-fil-A’s concept called Face-to-Face where employees take orders from drivers well before they reach the menu board at the back of the restaurant helps move traffic and drive sales, he said. They try to keep the wait time from order to pick-up in the two- to three-minute range, he said.

Hufford has reason to be proud of his store even if year-over-year comparisons are skewed.

Though it lacked three months worth of sales, the Chick-fil-A was still the No. 5 restaurant in Bentonville for calendar 2008.

 

Slower Sales

Many restaurants in Benton and Washington counties have folded in the last two years. A few new ones have opened, but nothing like the heydays of 2004 and 2005. And for the most part sales are down at the top 10 in both cities.

Fayetteville’s top 10 restaurants combined had $14.4 million in sales for the first two quarters of 2009, down 4.3 percent from the same period in 2008. Spots that saw increases were the Chick-fil-A at Northwest Village (across from the Northwest Arkansas Mall) with a 1.8 percent gain and the McDonald’s on Joyce Boulevard with a 7 percent gain.

The worst hit were Shogun Japanese Steak & Sushi, which had $1.29 million in sales for the reporting period, down 18.3 percent; and Red Lobster, which had $1.61 million in sales for the period, down 13.2 percent. Both restaurants are also near the mall.

At first glance, Bentonville’s top 10 restaurants grew in sales, but numbers are skewed by the Chick-fil-A, which opened April 10, 2008. If sales for that store are adjusted for both years, Bentonville’s top 10 dining spots were collectively down about 1 percent.

None of Bentonville’s restaurants were down as much as Fayetteville’s – the worst hit was Lin’s Garden Chinese, which had 7.4 percent fewer sales in the first two quarters. The deli at Sam’s Club was down 4.8 percent for the same period.