Last year was tough on restaurants. According to industry tracker TDn2K in its Restaurant Industry Snapshot, same-store sales — a metric used to evaluate sales from locations open for at least a year — declined 2.4%, with the fourth quarter of 2016 producing the worst quarterly results since the Great Recession. Furthermore, the report noted that the industry had “posted four consecutive quarters of declining year-over-year sales.” Foot traffic at restaurants was also down 4.6%, a decline not seen in over seven years.