Restaurants gaining more of food spend

More than half the money spent on food in the USA will be spent in restaurants by 2010, the country's National Restaurant Association (NRA) predicted last week at the International Hotel/Motel and Restaurant Show in New York.

The amount of cash spent in restaurants in the USA has been rising for years. In 1955, it was just one-quarter of the total spent on food, but it is now 46%.

B Hudson Riehle, senior vice-president for research for the NRA, said that the proportion of take-away food bought from restaurants would also continue to rise. This means more food will be bought from restaurants but not consumed in them.

A decade ago, 55% of food bought in restaurants was also eaten in them. Today, the figure is only 42%.

Riehle made his predictions at a seminar on the economic health of the hospitality business. At the same seminar, consultant Peter Yesowich said that the recovery in consumer confidence which followed 11 September last year had stalled in January.

A survey by Yesowich's company showed that, when asked if terrorism affected their decision to travel, the proportion of leisure travellers answering "yes" fell from 37% immediately after 11 September to 18% at the start of this year. The problem is that this figure has not changed since.

Yesowich added that leisure travellers were spending much less on travel and hotels than previously, and business travellers were still travelling in much lower numbers.

He said: "Cutting price is the main weapon for encouraging leisure travellers, but with business people this makes little difference. It makes no difference to a business traveller if the price is $199 or $399. If they are going to travel, they will, and if not, they won't."

by David Harris

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 14 - 20 November 2002

Projections

Projections for the US restaurant industry in 2002
Total sales for restaurants: $408b
Number of outlets: 858,000
Number of employees in the US restaurant business: 11.6 million
Percentage of food sales spent in restaurants: 41.6

Source:NRA