The GB out-of-home eating market is, like many other sectors, battling it out in the recession with consumers managing their spending by trading down from Full Service Restaurants (FSR), Pubs, and Café/Bistro into Quick Service Restaurants (QSR). Hospitality establishments need to understand – and respond to – the changing opportunities this offers.
The latest research from The NPD Group reveals annual per capita visits to out-of-home eating destinations for meals and snacks continued to decline with 179 visits per capita in 2012, down six visits compared to a couple of years ago. The result is fierce competition within the sector to win customers.
Visits for breakfast and evening snack up, lunch and afternoon down
One of the main casualties of this trend has been mid-day out-of-home (OOH) eating. Whilst breakfast has seen a +6% visit growth year-on-year (year ending September 2012 compared to year ending September 2011 for all figures), and morning snack visits are up +3%, lunch has declined by -3% and afternoon snacks by -3% (see chart below). The analysis below also indicates a rise in evening snacking, with visits up 12% year-on-year, whilst dinner is static for the same period.
Guy Fielding, Director of Business Development for The NPD Group, comments:
“As these figures show, breakfast is growing at the expense of other meal occasions – in this case lunch and afternoon snacks. This is particularly alarming for those channels that are heavily reliant on mid-day trade, but it does also signal the opportunity – and provides the motivation – for both operators and manufacturers to diversify into breakfast and evening snack occasions.”
“One of the drivers of this mid-day dip is time-pressed consumers increasingly looking for food on-the-go that is both fast and fresh. To this end, we expect to see the struggling full service sector start to deploy a more flex-casual approach by adopting a Quick Service style of service at lunch and off-peak periods, and offering the core Full Service delivery at dinner. Likewise, QSR operators are focusing more and more on building a bigger on-the-go business for both lunch and snacking, by introducing new products and greater focus on portion, portability and packaging.
“There has been a good deal of activity around the morning meal over the last year, and we fully expect this mid-day dip to shift the focus onto the important lunch and afternoon snacking occasion.”