Today’s NYTimes carries a brief and optimistic report of some research into the state of the US restaurant business. So selective is the newspaper‘s coverage, however, that it manages almost totally to reverse the overwhelmingly negative sentiments which the authors of the research actually expressed.

Despite three recessions in recent decades, runs the Times’s analysis, the number of US restaurant visits has increased every year since 1980 (bar one). Restaurateurs, it says, can therefore take comfort from the fact that “traffic does not always fall during a recession”.

Phew! What good news for US restaurateurs! (And, of course, their soul mates over here, who know that what happens Over There usually ends up happening Over Here.)

Sadly not, however. The Times‘s gloss on the report would appear to have been gathered solely from the first paragraph of NPD’s press release. Read as a whole, that release would appear to suggest that the report makes unarguably grim reading for an industry that’s tended in recent years to believe that the only way is up.

NPD’s own summary of its conclusions includes the following:

• “While each recessionary period had its own unique characteristics, NPD found that current conditions are most similar to those experienced in 1979 and 1980 when the industry experienced it steepest traffic losses.”

• “The restaurant industry posted no organic growth in 2007. Total customer traffic was barely up one percent (+0.7%) driven primarily by unit expansion, which suggests that traffic was flat on a comparable-store basis. This is the smallest traffic gain since the 2000-2003 period of unrest.”

And if you look at the graph which heads up the release, what’s most striking is the impression that, in the ’80s, restaurant visits spurted ahead spasmodically, and then in the ’90s consistently boomed at an accelerating rate. In the ’00s, however, what’s most striking is that they’ve essentially run out of steam.

This rather contradicts the often-expressed view that the macro-trend is to ever more restaurant visits.

The research suggests, however, that the past 25 years may in fact reflect certain special factors (which we would surmise are of equal relevance on both sides of the Atlantic). For example, “the restaurant industry’s growth was heavily driven by a greater percentage of women joining the workforce, but that trend is over.”

The report also notes – and this would perhaps be even more applicable in the UK – that: “ready-to-eat meals, frozen meals, etc. have multiplied over the years giving consumers more options and putting additional downward pressure on the restaurant industry.”

If such an analysis is half way right, it suggests that it’s not just in the US that the restaurant business may be set for a major period of consolidation. Or worse. And the mood music here? In Harden’s London Restaurants 2008 (published last September before gloom became the order of the day), we surmised that the current year may see more London restaurant closures than ever before.

PS (1 April) On the same bearish note, see a piece on caterersearch.com – “Rising food costs and too many mid-market eateries is likely to lead to a high number of business casualties later this year one analyst has warned”.