Without an astonishing turnaround between now and Dec. 31, a five-year run of wins is about to be over for the restaurant stocks. A combination of buzzy menu items, talked-up expansion prospects and IPOs kept restaurant companies in the news in 2013, and as a group, 42 stocks followed by Yahoo Finance rose an average of 51%, despite the fact that they regularly struggled to record any significant revenue growth or customer traffic gains. That was more than 20 percentage points better than the S&P 500.