I've long suspected that a lot of mystery shops have multiple purposes. One is to let the businesses know how they're doing. But I think it may be more and more a factor of driving sales. I see conflicting anecdotal data but at the end of the day, if nobody is buying the burgers or getting the car washed, they're not making any money. So they drive sales by having a mystery shopping program and guaranteeing that there will be foot traffic coming into their places of business. But, if that were the case, why would a place like Panda eliminate sodas from the program? As I understand it, fountain drinks are the highest mark-up. It would seem that you'd want to sell as many drinks as you can. I guess the theory may be that the shopper is probably going to buy a drink anyway so why subsidize it??? Anyway, it would fit that the MSC is now selling your data on top of everything else.