Restaurant Sales Start to Rebound

March retail sales certainly rebounded, and it looks like restaurants are enjoying some improving sales figures as well. According to data from the NPD Group restaurant sales were up 1% in March after declining 2.9% in 2009.The industry is also adding jobs, with 42,500 new ones coming on board during the first three months of this year. Those figures are down, though, by 251,000 since December 2007. At Yum! Brands, first quarter earnings rose 11%, helped in part by its Pizza Hut chain, which had a same-store sales rise 5% because of a promotion that offers any pizza for $10. But US sales were still down at the Taco Bell and KFC chains.And Frisch's, the owner of the Big Boy and Golden Corral chains in the Midwest, certainly didn't see any kind of uptick in its most recent quarter, when fell nearly 41% and sales were down 4.2%.Do you see more people dining out, or will the unemployment picture need to turn around further before there is significant improvement?ALSO: Retail Sales Are Up, but Landlords Are Still Feeling Down