Consumers like Eating-In while Dinning-Out

Getting ‘butts in seats’ used too be the only worry for restaurant managers trying to drive top line sales and bottom line profits at their restaurant. Steven Johnson the Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® stated recently “The consumer is dynamic not static. If the consumer likes your restaurant they will want to eat your meals at their house.  Restaurateurs must oblige.”

In a new report Technomic found: “The boom in takeout, delivery and catering hasn’t cut into on-premise restaurant dining, validating operators’ contentions the newfound business is largely incremental, according to a new study of dining-out patterns.  While Foodservice Solutions® team identified and quantified this back in 2014 and again in 2015 we love the validation.

Technomic found “Eating inside restaurants remains the top choice of restaurant patrons, with the portion of customers opting for dine-in service holding steady at 82% for the last three months”. Technomic noted “the gap between in-restaurant and off-premise consumption of meals prepared outside the home is closing. Seven of 10 customers bought takeout meals or snacks in the last three months, and two of three used a drive-thru, according to the report. Delivery was the least used off-premise option, but half of patrons used that channel in the most recently concluded quarter”

So why should you begin to focus on new non-traditional meals as incremental revenue because Millennials and Gen Xers are particularly avid buyers of food and beverages for off-premise consumption. The Technomic report found that 56% of the total restaurant dollars spent by those age groups went toward takeout or delivery.

Marianne Quinlan-Sacksteder, director of insights at Acosta’s Center of Shared Business Intelligence: “While our research found that dining in at restaurants has remained flat year-over-year, U.S. diners instead indicated spreading their dollars across a variety of out-of-home channels," .. "Diners reported out-of-home food spending has increased significantly over the past two years, with increasing levels of diners indicating they are leveraging foodservice solutions beyond dine-in establishments.”

Success does leave clues www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  is the global leader in grocerant niche business development.  We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities.  Has your company had a Grocerant ScoreCard completed, Grocerant Program Assessment, or new Grocerant niche product Ideation?  Want one?  Call 253-759-7869 Email: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us