Looks like the left media is, lying again. What else is new?
Media reports yesterday claimed that Donald Trump’s federalization of DC policing had led to a huge plunge in restaurant reservations.
Data from OpenTable shows that relative to the same calendar dates last year, reservations at DC restaurants were down by 20 percent or more from August 11th through August 17th, troughing out at 31 percent below 2024 levels on Wednesday 13th August (see graph below from Fox5 DC). Comparing the Monday to Sunday week directly (August 11-17th 2025 vs. August 12-18th 2024), dining was down 24 percent this year.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...c0b8b-466b-4310-ad3d-9e37a3ab99bc_806x749.png
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Were DC’s 2025 restaurant goers really so skittish about humvees at Union Station and the prospect of military patrols in Dupont Circle that almost a third cancelled their dinner plans or avoided DC entirely?
I was skeptical of such a big effect, especially because the drop-off trend turned downwards before Donald Trump’s announcement and then stuck through the week even when it became obvious there were no large-scale and violent counter-protests. That got me thinking: perhaps there was something weird going on with last year’s data, such that the relative drop-off for 2025 actually reflected an elevated number of reservations in 2024?
Well, it turns out that August 12 through August 18th 2024 was last year’s DC summer Restaurant Week, which this year only began on August 18th. Restaurant Week is a promotional dining event where (over 350) participating restaurants offered special fixed-price menus in 2024 for the duration of the week, and sometimes beyond. A major aim is to boost reservation rates in the lean summer period, as a means of introducing diners to new restaurants.
The result is that seated reservation rates were likely inflated relative to “normal” for almost the entire equivalent week in 2024 (sadly OpenTable doesn’t have the longer time series publicly available to confirm, though I’ve asked for it). It therefore stands to reason that the year-on-year downturn being widely reported for this past week was exaggerated by the comparison from an artificially higher baseline in 2024.
ryanbourne.substack.com
We can't believe a word the "Russia Collusion/Russian Disinformation/Biden is Fine"19%er liars spew.
Did Restaurant Reservations Really Plunge Because of Trump's DC Takeover?
Media reports yesterday claimed that Donald Trump’s federalization of DC policing had led to a huge plunge in restaurant reservations.
Data from OpenTable shows that relative to the same calendar dates last year, reservations at DC restaurants were down by 20 percent or more from August 11th through August 17th, troughing out at 31 percent below 2024 levels on Wednesday 13th August (see graph below from Fox5 DC). Comparing the Monday to Sunday week directly (August 11-17th 2025 vs. August 12-18th 2024), dining was down 24 percent this year.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...c0b8b-466b-4310-ad3d-9e37a3ab99bc_806x749.png
~
Were DC’s 2025 restaurant goers really so skittish about humvees at Union Station and the prospect of military patrols in Dupont Circle that almost a third cancelled their dinner plans or avoided DC entirely?
I was skeptical of such a big effect, especially because the drop-off trend turned downwards before Donald Trump’s announcement and then stuck through the week even when it became obvious there were no large-scale and violent counter-protests. That got me thinking: perhaps there was something weird going on with last year’s data, such that the relative drop-off for 2025 actually reflected an elevated number of reservations in 2024?
Well, it turns out that August 12 through August 18th 2024 was last year’s DC summer Restaurant Week, which this year only began on August 18th. Restaurant Week is a promotional dining event where (over 350) participating restaurants offered special fixed-price menus in 2024 for the duration of the week, and sometimes beyond. A major aim is to boost reservation rates in the lean summer period, as a means of introducing diners to new restaurants.
The result is that seated reservation rates were likely inflated relative to “normal” for almost the entire equivalent week in 2024 (sadly OpenTable doesn’t have the longer time series publicly available to confirm, though I’ve asked for it). It therefore stands to reason that the year-on-year downturn being widely reported for this past week was exaggerated by the comparison from an artificially higher baseline in 2024.
Did Restaurant Reservations Really Plunge Because of Trump's DC Takeover?
Update: new data since publication vindicates the hypothesis outlined in this piece.
ryanbourne.substack.com
We can't believe a word the "Russia Collusion/Russian Disinformation/Biden is Fine"19%er liars spew.
