Franchisor Dine Brands Global announced it would close about 100 IHOP locations this year. The company, which also owns Applebee’s as well, posted a drop in revenue last quarter to $177 million from $217 million last year. Sales across the two brands dipped. Due to this, underperforming restaurants have to be shuttered. However, IHOP will continue to operate in over 1,500 places in the United States. These are not distributed evenly at all, and are mostly in the south and west parts of the country.
Overall, IHOP same-restaurant sales dropped 30.2% in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year. The decline, on the same basis, in the current quarter through October 15 was 24%. The makeup of how people dine at IHOP has changed considerably. IHOP’s delivery sales were 15.7% of revenue and takeout sales were 18.3% of revenue for the third quarter of 2020. IHOP’s online sales were 22.0% of total revenue of the third quarter. This compares to 34.7% of total sales for the second quarter of 2020. People have started to dine in IHOP restaurants again, but the COVID-19 pandemic continues to keep many customers away.
The company described its plans as it moved forward for the balance of this year and into next:
Closures are part of the normal course of business in the industry, especially for a company of our size and footprint, and occur for many reasons – including a restaurant being in a lapsed trade area – where once vibrant traffic characteristics are no longer present – or as a result of leases expiring, among other reasons.
This dodged the issue of revenue attrition.
According to research firm ScrapeHero, IHOP’s largest store counts in the United States are in the three largest states by population. California has 234, Texas has 213 and Florida has 146.
The count by city is dominated by the same three states:
| City | Number of Locations |
|---|---|
| San Antonio, Texas | 21 |
| Houston, Texas | 19 |
| Las Vegas, Nevada | 14 |
| Orlando, Florida | 13 |
| Phoenix, Arizona | 11 |
| San Diego, California | 11 |
| Los Angeles, California | 11 |
| Austin, Texas | 9 |
| Dallas, Texas | 8 |
| Miami, Florida | 8 |
Clearly, IHOP is a warm-weather restaurant chain. Its location spread looks very different from the nation’s largest chain, McDonald’s, which has stores distributed much more like the population.
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