Restaurants and Institutions

Chris Muller

The New Meaning of Convenience
May 12, 2008

In my last posting I wrote that there are five compelling trends for the industry to learn, and that the Baby Boom Generation is becoming irrelevant as a market force.  Let me start with the first of the trends below, and see how the two suggestions fit together.

The Five Trends I believe are most compelling for our industry in 2008 are these:

1. Consumers' desire for “convenience”;
2. The expanding challenges of supermarket “made for you” foods;
3. Defining the meaning of “going green”;
4. Identifying the search for Wellness and authenticity;
5. Targeting the shifting “value-sensitive consumer.”

If you are of a “certain age” (meaning you were alive before 1980), your definition of “convenience” was associated with places such as 7-Eleven or Store 24 or WaWa.  A convenience store was a place you went for overpriced staples such as bread and milk, or to buy cigarettes or the occasional Slurpee.  Your meal choice in one of these stores might be a hot dog spinning on a roller-grill or a plastic-bagged sandwich made in some commissary.  The meaning of convenience was “no place else is open.”

Beginning about 20 years ago, convenience took on a different meaning.  It meant some kind of packaged single-serve meal, usually frozen, which was available in a full-service supermarket.  Food in this form was convenient because it was available in your home freezer and it only needed to be put in the microwave to be ready (you baby boomers will remember this as a “TV Dinner”).  Convenience meant “I don’t want to leave the house tonight and I just don’t want to cook.”

But over the last decade, “convenience” has become pervasive in foodservice, and is a driving variable for consumer choice.  According to Restaurant & Institutions' 2008 New American Diner Study, 80% of those surveyed said that “When Choosing a Restaurant Convenience is Important to Me” during weekdays.  73% said it was important on the weekend.  Clearly eight out of 10 consumers are not defining daily convenience as a Big Gulp and a chili dog.

No, the top three restaurant convenience variables in the R&I survey were: location, dining close to home, and access to easy or free parking.  I would suggest these are very closely related to the macro-variable described as “I don’t have a lot of time to eat.”

But there is a significant generational difference in what comes after being close to home.  For those respondents under the age of 26, a demographic that is now called Millennials, 35.3% said convenience meant a drive-thru window—more than 1 in 3 of the most desirable consumer segment.  Only 19.5% of baby boomers (less than one in 5) identified drive-thru windows in the same way. 

What does this mean for the restaurant strategist?  Along with all of the other socio-demographic changes which are occurring in the US consumer markets a large segment of the population potentially views a full-service sit down meal as “inconvenient.”

As with so many words and phrases in American English, definition and usage can change in a very short period.  The risk for the industry is that many of the traditional products and services we offer are being defined by a new generation.  This new group of dining customers has grown up expecting to eat what they want when they want, with food products having full flavor profiles and a healthy, made-for-you attitude.  This also means they grew up with very different perceptions of value then their parents.

Posted by Chris Muller on May 12, 2008 | Comments (1)