Abha Bhattarai writes in the WaPo:
An increasing number of Americans are ditching $10 sandwiches and $12 salads in favor of food from home, according to new data from the research firm NPD Group. Lunch traffic is slowing at restaurants around the country, with weekday lunch visits down 7 percent compared to a year ago, the steepest decline since the beginning of the recession, data show.
I found the article interesting, although I think you should take the statistical reporting with a grain of salt, pardon the pun.
I am not part of the dining-out culture, but I do not spend much time on food preparation.. Apart from a few fruits and vegetables, I tend to go with prepared foods from the store.
In general, I expect people to increase their consumption of food prepared by others. In a world of specialization and trade, the costliest lunch of all is the one that you spend a lot of time making yourself.
Given that “lunch spots” tend to gravitate towards high concentrations of office space, I would be interested to see if the downward trend in lunch traffic correlates with an upward trend in unoccupied or quasi-occupied office space. See, e.g., http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/morning_call/2015/12/fairfax-county-takes-aim-at-filling-vacant-office.html.
Unoccupied space is often the result of idiotic zoning decisions. In particular, the zoning board requires mixed-use redevelopment, regardless of the relative demands for residential v. office.
I will point the finger at Fairfax County since I am involved as a condominium owner in a rezoning request. The value of our property for redevelopment purposes was radically downgraded after the Zoning Board arbitrarily scrapped an all-residential rezoning proposal. (They insisted on the addition of office space, despite the fact that there is already a glut, at which point two of the three developers who had made proposals pulled out, and the third modified their redevelopment offer.)
If a ‘lunch spot’ moves into the bottom floor of a ten-story office building, and only eight of those floors are actually occupied, you would expect the lunch spot to under-perform.
I refer to quasi-occupied office space because I telecommute three days a week. There is a lunch spot on the ground floor of my office building, but there are only two days a week when I would possibly get lunch there. The rise of telecommuting would therefore tend to reduce lunch traffic as well.
High level I can think of four factors here:
1) If you include health benefits the fall in real income during the Great Recession (5 – 10%), it is having a tremendous impact and ‘expensive’ lunches are early to go.
2) A good portion of the drop in labor force participation is second income families.
3) A slow impact of telecomuting and increased home office. Even an increase of workers 1 – 2% of days will have an impact over a 8 year period.
4) Due to the Great Recession, a lot of offices cut down the team lunches (say every 3 weeks to every 2 months) to cut expenses.
Almost no one goes out to lunch where I work. I’d like to go out right now, but can’t, so I bring from home. Some reasons.
1. Office work ethic culture which trickles down from leadership, looks like shirking. Totally acceptable, therefore, to snack on meetings and eat at desk. “Sad salad culture”.
2. Too much time away from office – on call face to face availability too important for high priority matters requiring immediate attention.
3. Like 2, Journey just takes too long, especially in secured workplaces or when driving/parking is an issue.
4. My workplace gave most people mini-fridges to put under desks, and made good microwaves and toasters and ‘pantry’ spaces more common and available. Easier, quicker, and cheaper to make good food in office than ever before.
5. Vending machine selection had improved,with more, newer machines too that take cards and so can offer more expensive and refrigerated items.
I’ll throw an anecdotal factor out there: an increasingly fragmented market. We have lots more different choices as to what to eat now, which has led a significant fraction of the market to make some unique diet and lifestyle choices. The result is those people go out to eat less often because while there are restaurants out there that have, say, gluten free organic pasta, there’s probably only one or two close by and you can’t eat there every day. Since I switched to a low-carb diet a few years ago, I go out to eat substantially less often; a lot of restaurants just don’t have many (or any) options that fit that description. And if you like to dine out with coworkers, you have to take their dietary preferences in to account, also, and the likelihood that we can think of a place that’s nearby and acceptable to all of us declines and we all just say “ah, screw it, I’m packing my lunch.”
Another couple of factors- places bringing in catered lunch, food trucks.
Food trucks are an excellent point, also. Largely a cash business…sales probably don’t show up in any statistics. To the extent they steal business from other low-end restaurants, that could be part of what’s pushing up the average costs discussed in the article.
Minimum wages have been on the rise, also, in a number of locales the past few years, which I’m sure is affecting prices, too.
“…the costliest lunch of all is the one that you spend a lot of time making yourself.”
You snuck in that “spend a lot of time.” How much time does it really take to throw two handfuls of bagged lettuce into a plastic container, along with some green pepper, cuke, pre-made pico, and a pod of dressing? 4-5 whole strawberries, and a Noosa yogurt. Presto: a healthy lunch. <10 minutes prep time.
I do wonder how many of these are self prepared vs leftovers vs grocery store.