As the on-premise channel struggles to maintain growth, happy hour's role in increasing sales and traffic is growing steadily in 2014. In fact, 66% of consumers have gone to happy hour in the past 90 days to February, up from 54% in 2013, according to a recent survey of 1,000 national restaurant chain consumers from Next Level Marketing (NLM). Moreover, 71% of consumers consider happy hour somewhat to very important when deciding which bar or restaurant to visit.