A recent sales study indicates that consumption of seafood dishes in Bay City restaurants has increased by 30 percent during the past five years. Yet there are no currently operating city restaurants whose specialty is seafood. Moreover, the majority of f

The author assumes that the new Captain restaurant that specializes in seafood should be popular and profitable. He based his argument on several assumptions as the 30 percent increase, no other restaurant specializing in seafood and families there prefer healthy food. Although his reasons look sound and reasonable but he failed to address the answer of several questions. Thus the argument is weak and has several flaws.

Firstly, he based his assumption on the 30 percent increase during the past five years. But the main question here is the 30 percent a significant increase in sales to consider new Captain Seafood popular and profitable? The author did not mention the total increase among all restaurants. For instance the total consumption might be more than 300 percent which is due to economic development that affected the whole city. Therefore 30 percent is not evidence that it is profitable.

Secondly, assuming that majority of families in Bay City prefer healthy food. The study did not mention to what extent the citizens of Bay City consider seafood healthy. Even if people prefer to go there, the reason might not be healthy food. There is a flaw in this assumption as they might have preferred their white cream seafood pasta, or fried shrimps and calamari. Therefore there is no evidence that the restaurant has become popular and profitable because it serves healthy food. Also there is no strong relation between the popularity of the Captain Seafood restaurant and that residents eat fewer home cooked meals.

Finally, the details of the sample taken were not mentioned, their number, on what basis, their social class, average prices spend on meals in the city restaurants and the average price in Captain Bay restaurant, neighborhood. This kind of information is very important for the reliability and validity of the survey. People might prefer it for its cheap prices not because it serves healthy food. Or maybe it is located in a distant neighborhood where there are no other restaurants then people will have no other choices.

To conclude, although the author based his assumption on numbers gathered from surveys, he ignored important information and several key points that resulted in a weak argument which has several flaws.