Aside from being forced into servitude as Bill O’Reilly’s personal shuffleboard caddy, there are few scenarios that result in more sweaty despair than eating your body weight in Oreo cheesecake and fettuccini Alfredo on a 97-degree summer day. And unfortunately, it seems like the suburban gift to civilization that is the Cheesecake Factory is having a pretty damn hard time conveying that indelible truth to investors. The restaurant chain is trying to explain away its recent sales slump on the weather—but no one seems to be buying the excuse.
Cheesecake Factory recently announced that its second quarter sales for 2017 were a fair bit lower than expected. The reason for the poor performance, according to the company? Shitty weather.
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The company originally expected an increase of 1.7 percent this quarter. When it announced this week that results were instead down 1 percent, investors wondered why. To explain the poor performance in a statement, Chairman and CEO David Overton said, “We have seen pockets of softness as we moved through the quarter, notably in the East and Midwest where we also faced unfavorable weather that reduced patio usage.”
Cheesecake Factory’s investors weren’t buying what Cheesecake was selling. After Overton’s reasoning for the poor quarterly performance was explained, the chain saw an 8 percent fall in the price of its shares this Tuesday. As a result, the Cheesecake Factory is looking at its largest single-day loss loss in eight years. When MUNCHIES reached out to the Cheesecake Factory for comment, they declined to comment on the matter.
Maybe there’s another explanation for Cheesecake’s drop in popularity. After all, year-to-date shares are down nearly 3 percent. Some say it may be a decline in mall traffic overall or a generation gap, given Millennials’ waning interest in fast casual dining.
Who knows? It’s kind of hot here today, but a slice of peanut butter cheesecake the size of an infant’s head actually sounds ok to us—rain or shine.
