Sales manager: Last year the total number of meals sold in our company's restaurants was much higher than it was the year before.
Conclusion (clearly)
The desirability of our meals has decreased.
Evidence (given that)
Looking at individual restaurants, every restaurant that operated last year and two years ago sold a lower number of meals.
Evaluate
Given that ... every restaurant that's been open for at least two years reported selling fewer meals this year than last year,
How could we say that ... the desirability of the meals has not decreased?
We could come up with alternate explanations for why all the restaurants sold fewer meals this year than last year, explanations that don't relate to the meals being less desirable.
- Maybe it's "the Starbucks effect" where the restaurant builds so many locations that they steal business from each other (like if you've ever seen two Starbucks that are ridiculously close to each other in the same town, it's pretty much a guarantee that the 2nd location steals some business from the 1st location)
- Maybe this restaurant serves delicious junk food, and there's a local diet craze that means that even though people still desire the food as much as before, they're buying it less often to stay true to their diet
- Maybe this restaurant raised its prices, so even though people desire the meals, they can't afford to eat there as frequently.
Goal
When an author is Explaining / Interpreting a Curious Fact, (), we weaken either with - An Alternate Explanation for the curious fact or by - Undermining the plausibility of the author's explanation
So we need a different reason why fewer meals are being sold at the restaurants that have been open 2+ years, or we need some fact that makes it seem like consumers desire these meals as much or more than before.