Has the empanada craze peaked? Empanadas hit the popular restaurant scene in force a couple of years ago, when big cities saw hundreds of small shops specializing in empanadas open. However, data from UpServe, a provider of restaurant POS, payments and analytics software, shows that empanada sales slipped last year.
UpServe analyzes sales data from about 3,000 restaurants that use its systems to tease out trends. It released a report on January 23 that compares sales data for various menu items against overall sales and creates a metric called Upserve Performance Score, which ranges from 0 to 10. The higher the score, the stronger the sales of a given menu item are.
The report included information about a number of items common to Latin restaurant menus. Empanadas, for example, earned a score of 6.46, compared to about 6.9 two years ago. "Although empanadas saw solid sales, it's been trending down year over year," the report said. "It's not likely to make a resurgence in 2018."
Another common Latin restaurant menu item that seems to be slipping in popularity is anything that is "fire roasted." Such items scored 8.92, which is solid, but the figure has fallen over the past two years. "While popular, [fire roasted] will probably flatten out in the coming years," the report said.
Fortunately, two other popular Latin menu items are going strong, according to UpServe's data. Tacos scored 9.81, and has never dipped below 9.4. Tamales scored a moderate score of 5.91 -- probably because few non-Latin restaurants serve tamales -- but that score represents a bit of a rebound from 2016. Tamales' "end-of-year performance suggests it still has some spice in 2018," the report said.
To read more details from the UpServe report, click here.