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The U.S. restaurant industry is in a funk. Blame it on lunch.
Americans made 433 million fewer trips to restaurants at lunchtime last year, resulting in roughly $3.2 billion in lost business for restaurants, according to market-research firm NPD Group Inc. It was the lowest level of lunch traffic in at least four decades.
While that loss in traffic is a 2% decline from 2015, it is a significant one-year drop for an industry that has traditionally relied on lunch and has had little or no growth for a decade.
"I put [restaurant] lunch right up there with fax machines and pay phones," said Jim Parks, a 55-year-old sales director who used to dine out for lunch nearly every day but found in recent years that he no longer had room for it in his schedule.
Like Mr. Parks, many U.S. workers now see stealing away for an hour at the neighborhood diner in the middle of the day as a luxury. Even the classic "power lunch" is falling out of favor among power brokers.
Re-heating leftovers in the break room microwave takes two minutes and is guaranteed to be on your diet?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:00PM (4 children)
Time? I got all the time in the world. Fitting a daily $10 lunch into the budget? Not so much.
It is important to get out of the office though, so on "eat at my desk days" (which are happening more and more), I'm sure to get out for a 15 minute walk at some point during the day.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:18PM
Less than 10 years ago, I used to do outside lunch almost every day for under $5, and get some decent food in the process (dinner would provide the actual balancing of the diet).
Inflation makes it hard to keep lunch under $8 these days, unless you really want to exercise your liver and kidneys.
Gladly, I moved away from Chicago, where going out for lunch is the only chance you get of feeling a little bit of heat from the sun, in winter. If you miss it, gloom settles in quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:35PM (1 child)
I prefer to have lunch out rather than dinner out. Same food, lower cost.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:51PM
Yeah, but you can get seriously screwed ordering your favorite dinner-plate during lunchtime and finding wimpy portions and missing items.
Eating out for lunch is alive and well in the local businessparks here, though, whether it's ordering from a counter or a waiter. The problem with hourly scum like me is that I have only a short time to eat, though half an hour is enough time for a comfy sit-in eating a burrito and reading a newspaper.
If I could just skip lunch, keep working, and go home a half-hour early I'd do that, but we have annoying labor laws here which prevent that situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:33AM
You forgot the bash the millennials for their economic circumstances because they're eating out so much they can't afford to eat out.
Then in the next thread we can get back to bashing them for their economic circumstances because they're eating out so much they can't afford a house.
Moral of the story is: You pussy good-for-nothing snowflake millennials can't afford to eat out because you're eating out too much!!