Sales manager: Last year the total number of meals sold in our company restaurants was much higher than it was the year before. Obviously, consumers find our meals desirable.
Accountant: If you look at individual restaurants, however, you find that the number of meals sold actually decreased substantially at every one of our restaurants that was in operation both last year and the year before. The desirability of our meals to consumers has clearly decreased,
given that this group of restaurants---the only ones for which we have sales figures that permit a comparison between last year and the year before---demonstrates a trend toward fewer sales.
If the sales figures cited by the accountant and the sales manager are both accurate, which one of the following must be true?
(A) The company
opened at least one new restaurant in the last two years.
(B) The company's
meals are less competitive than they once were.
(C) The
quality of the company's meals has not improved over the last two years.
(D) The
prices of the company's meals have changed over the past two years.
(E) The
market share captured by the company's restaurants fell last year.
All except A are dealing in factors that are not discussed in the passage. More importantly none of those factors affect the passage at all because of which they can't be inferred.
The only way such a difference to exist is possible if the restaurants in focus differ in number between sales manager's and that of accountant's.
A elaborates perfectly why that might have been possible.
Answer A.
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