The NPD Group found restaurant discontinuity continues.

The NPD Group found Combo Meals remain in decline.  In 2005 we released our White Paper Restaurant Consumer Discontinuity; we noted consumer migration in food format preference.

Bonnie Riggs NPD restaurant industry analyst revealed some findings from The NPD Group’s new study “Understanding Combo Meal Purchas Behavior” that “consumers purchased 8 billion combo meals in the year ended January 2012, down more than 12 percent from the 9 billion sold in the same period five years earlier.”

One of the key reasons for the decline noted by Riggs was that “consumers said they would like to make changes to the contents of the meals, in particular, the side items.”  NPD and Riggs do very good work and I highly recommend you consider buying NPD research products.  Regular readers of this blog know we regularly documented that consumers like to mix and match meal components. Mix and match meal bundling is a benchmark for success within the grocerant niche.

Meal time is now becoming a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization for the entire family.  The ability of the retailer to empower consumer choice within a bundled offering creates an additional platform for success.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities.  Foodservice Solutions of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant