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Report: 34% of QSR users visited less often in Q4 '09
March 18, 2010
As quick-service operators well know, the segment has been hurt more this recession by reduced consumer spending and high unemployment than in past downturns. A new report by independent research company Sandelman & Associates shows just where QSRs once-core customers are now spending their dining dollars.
The new report "Where are Fast-Food Users Eating When They're Not Visiting Fast-Food?"reveals that consumers are dining out less — at casual dining, fast casual and quick-service restaurants — and they're making do with home-cooked meals and supermarket-prepared foods. In fact, 89 percent of those who are visiting QSRs less are cooking at home more often.
Overall, the percentage of regular QSR users has declined to about 80 percent, compared to more than 90 percent of consumers who enjoyed fast food monthly just five to 10 years ago.
Casual dining has struggled even more than quick-serve, and it's widely thought that diners have "traded down." It's true some casual dining occasions have been replaced by fast casual and QSR visits.
Only 13 percent of fast-food users say they visited QSR chains more often in fall 2009 than in fall 2008. Another 34 percent said they were visiting less in fall 2009. But what's impacting the industry more than anything else is the signficant drop in regular visits by 18- to-34-year-old males — the industry's target customer demographic. Forty-nine percent of those former regular customers are visiting less often.
Many consumers report they are reducing their usage and spending. Not only are young men visiting QSRs less but also 41 percent say they're spending less when they dine.
In general, men are cutting back more than women, and young people are shedding visits more than middle-aged users.
With respect to both frequency and spending, QSRs' relatively low price points have helped them fare better than full-service restaurants in consumers' attempts to balance budgets. Interestingly, a greater percentage of users report spending less at fast food in 2009 than those who report spending less at casual dining, though casual dining visits are more likely to have been cut out all together.
Sandelman & Associates' Quick-Track National study presents detailed information for October 2009 to December 2009, plus comparisons with 2008. Respondents were asked a series of special questions related to how their dining habits might have changed over the past year at casual dining and fast-food restaurants. The report provides details on patronage patterns for quick-service restaurants, casual and family dining restaurants, plus key demographics.
Quick-Track is an ongoing, syndicated, quantitative research study that tracks consumer behaviors and attitudes toward all major QSR and pizza chains in about 75 U.S. markets as well as nationally. In the Quick-Track National study, data is collected continuously via telephone interviews from a nationally representative sample of 600 respondents per quarter.
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