Small business sales in the U.S. rose in July because customers spent more per visit, not because more of them showed up, according to Fiserv's Small Business Index. The index came in at 145.3, up 1.6% year over year and 0.2% from June, while the separate transaction index slipped to 103 from 104 a year earlier. Restaurants carried the pattern hardest, where average tickets climbed 2.8% but the number of transactions fell 3.6%, and limited-service chains did worse still with sales off 3.4% on a 5.3% decline in transactions. Retail ran the opposite way, posting a 1.9% sales gain on 2.2% more transactions even as average tickets dipped 0.8%. Gasoline sales jumped 14.2% almost entirely on a 15.4% rise in average tickets, which the report links to fallout from the Iran war.
