Overlooked Millennials Remain a Chain Restaurants Nightmare

 

In search of food discovery Millennials are simply not loyal customers as legacy brands are finding out. Consider that grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat & Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food can be found on 83.4% of American’s family dinner tables in 2023 in the most recent Grocerant ScoreCards conducted according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. 

What’s more disturbing to U.S. chain restaurants; consumers prefer to eat dinner at home and are seeking more ways to help them do so. 

Study after study confirms what a Peapod study found back in 2019.  They found that “of more than 1,000 adults polled, 77% said they would rather eat a homemade meal than go out for dinner, and 43% aim to cook more at home, the data was compiled by Engine. Here is some of what they found:

1. The top reason consumers said they’d rather make dinner at home is cost savings, cited by 77% of respondents.
2. Desire to eat healthier (51%)
3. Spend more quality time with family (41%),
4. Millennials exhibited a greater desire to eat dinner at home, Peapod noted. The survey revealed that 59% of Millennials plan to cook more often, while 48% said that making the evening meal at home affords more time with family. 

5.       Millennials, were three to four times more likely than Boomers to have interest in creating weekly meal plans (51% versus 16%), cooking with children (39% versus 9%) and using online grocery delivery (29% versus 10%).

The simple fact is restaurant price continue to climb with 87% of restaurants increasing their menu prices, which are 8.5% higher on average year-over-year.

So, if there is a positive takeaway (or a couple), it is that restaurant prices have increased at a lower clip than grocery store prices, which are up 12% year-over-year. Regular readers of this blog know that in the competitive battle over share-of-stomach, price is top of mind currently.

When consumers are asked about cooking at home it is important to note they are not talking today about cooking from scratch according to Johnson.  What they are talking about is meal assembly.  Using Grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food that can be mix & matched into a perfect family meal.  If success does leave clues and it does.  Retailer need to follow the clues to the Grocerant niche. Ask your self what meals and meal components are we selling and where? Could you be selling more meals?

Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions 5P’s of Food Marketing can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.