This chart about spending in restaurants is unbelievable ... because it has a major problem

This is an amazing chart.

FRED

The chart shows that total spending at restaurants and bars - "food and drinking places" - topped spending at grocery stores in March.

This is a huge deal.

But it doesn't quite show what you think.

That's because major grocery retailers like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target aren't considered grocery stores, as Jonathan Maze at the Nation's Restaurant News notes.

Maze also points out that more than half of Wal-Mart's $485 billion in annual sales come from grocery, and says a grocery number from Wal-Mart alone would probably but it over the top.

And even so, sales at restaurants and bars just barely clipped grocery spending in March, totaling $52,349,000,000 against $49,688,000,000 for grocery stores.

This doesn't however, mean that this trend isn't a huge deal: the habits of American consumers are obviously changing. And in a big way.