Writing on the NPD Group Blog, Bob O’Brien points out that, for all the recent, positive talk of the British foodservice industry’s return to growth, the underlying fact is that British consumers have not yet increased their use of restaurants enough to get the industry on a growth path again.
The overall commercial foodservice market was almost flat, but ever-so-slightly down, for the 12 months ending October 2013.
In fact, NPD’s CREST ongoing foodservice market research shows that the industry in the UK is still almost 3% smaller than it was in 2008. This weakness is a reflection of the difficulties being experienced in the independent foodservice sector – chains and global chains, in contrast, have grown consistently in the aftermath of the global economic crisis.
Consumers were making some sort of commercial restaurant purchase a little more than 150 times per person per year in 2008. That number fell with the crisis and has yet to return.
Bob concludes by pointing out that:
“…the return of economic health and correlated employment will bring growth to the foodservice market. First, they’ll have to build back to their previous rate of use and then, as heavier users age and replace older, less frequent users, the industry will indeed begin to grow. That’s very likely to happen. There’s just a bit of a problem of getting some growth in the first place right now.”