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GROWING YOUR BUSINESS
At restaurants, takeout takes off...
[USA Today]
Stuart Kroll recently pulled his 83-foot yacht into the marina in St. Simons Island, GA, and did what any good yachtsman would do: He ordered out.
Not just any takeout, mind you. A gourmet dinner of fresh grouper, vegetable medley and fine wine was wheeled to his boat from Coastal Kitchen Seafood & Raw Bar, an upscale marina restaurant 400 feet away. Dinner for two: $150.
"Our boat is our waterfront restaurant," says Kroll, an investor who, with his wife, Ginny, divides time among East Coast marinas. "Why eat out?"
Most Americans don’t own yachts — or even dinghies — but the couple are part of a growing majority of consumers who often buy restaurant-made meals to eat elsewhere. Restaurants used to be where folks went to sit and eat. But in a nation whose citizens are increasingly too busy, too impatient and perhaps even too lazy to sit down and eat a meal out, more restaurants than ever are evolving into something few could have predicted even two decades ago: packaged-goods emporiums.
America not only has become a takeout nation, it’s increasingly picky about what it brings home. Takeout lunch or dinner no longer is limited to the neighborhood McDonald’s or Pizza Hut, the supermarket deli or the prepared-food section of an upscale grocer such as Whole Foods. Now, in a trend that’s reshaping the $537 billion restaurant industry, consumers are demanding takeout from casual and even fine-dining eateries.
Well over half of the meals purchased at the nation’s estimated 935,000 restaurants are gobbled up at home, back at the office or in the car. Twenty-five years ago, far more people ate restaurant food in eateries than took it out. By 2006, the typical American ate 81 meals inside restaurants but ordered 127 to go, reports researcher NPD Group.
The very notion of eating out is being redefined. "People used to go to restaurants to eat," says Harry Balzer, food guru at NPD Group, who has been tracking the trend for more than two decades. "Now, they go out to get food to go."
Industry shifts toward takeout
The numbers keep growing. More than nine in 10 family-dining and casual-dining restaurants offer takeout, as do three-quarters of fine-dining locations, reports the National Restaurant Association. And 47% of casual-dining operators recently surveyed say their takeout business will grow in 2007.
"The industry used to say it was America’s dining room," says Hudson Riehle, the group’s senior vice president of research. But as the takeout side of the business explodes, he says, "It’s becoming America’s family room."
A generation of Americans is eating out in an entirely different way than did the generation before it. In 1955, about 25% of the money Americans spent on all food purchases — including groceries — was at restaurants. Today, it’s 48%, the restaurant trade group says.
It’s a trend that’s changing American society — for good or bad. It’s also affecting the way restaurants, plain or fancy, do business:
source: USA Today
INCREASE YOUR TAKE OUT BUSINESS
When people have your menu, you enhance the opportunity for them to call and order take out.
1. You can make the menu available everytime they leave your establishment (increased print cost);
2. You can fax it to them (increased phone and staff time);
3. You can make it available, view or download, from your Web site (the most cost-effective solution).
Saving time is important to people... and knowing (your) good food can be ready and waiting is a plus to them and a competitive advantage to your business.
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