Are people not dining out hurting box office revenues or is a poor box office hurting the restaurant industry? See the data then you tell me...

I have been reading where the movie box office for the summer has been down.  Bad movies? Bad economy? Sequestration?  Effect of January's payroll tax cut finally kicking in?

I don't know which reason makes the most sense, if any of them

I read today where monthly retail sales were down from the previous month.  I started thinking about the relationship between these two measures.

Going to a movie and dining out seem to go hand in hand for many/most people, right?  It makes for a nice day/evening.

The Commerce Department report on Retail Sales has a nice breakdown of each sector of retail and the category "Food and Drink" is one of them.  LUCKY ME!!

I created this crude graph with historical data from the Commerce Dept and only went back to January of 2012.  Figured that was far enough to see a trend.

The line looks like a bull-whip. From January of 2013 (first red dot on left) to present the tail of the whip is unstable. Prior to that is was pretty smooth and trending up.

The erratic trend might/should set off some alarm bells.  Employment in "Food and Drink" has been a savior in the last couple of months.  Is that about to come to an end?

So what do you think.  Is not dining out hurting the movie industry or are crappy, lackluster movies hurting the food and drink industry?  Probably neither, but they are both tethered together for better or worse.