restaurants

Affluent Consumers Eating More Fast Food

girls eating fast foodAffluent consumers increased their visits to fast-food burger restaurants, but cut back on visits to the more upscale chains within the family restaurants category in the months following the economic "meltdown" in early October.

Those are among the restaurant-related trends emerging from newly released Experian Simmons data from the latest three-month wave of the Simmons National Consumer Study (Fall 2008).

The preliminary data reflects week-by-week trends for the period spanning Aug. 18 to Dec. 8 last year. Because the data are not yet weighted (fully projected to the U.S. population), absolute percentages are not claimed to be exact; however, the relative percentages are indicative of trends across time.

Following the meltdown (pegged at Oct. 3), the data show a distinct uptick in reported recent (last 30 days) visits to fast-food burger chains among households with incomes of $75,000 and above.

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Furthermore, the uptrend was more marked among the highest incomes levels. For example, the percentage of consumers with household incomes of $100,000+ having visited one (unnamed) burger chain jumped from 50.1% pre-meltdown to 57.3% post-meltdown, and the percentage reporting visiting a second unnamed burger chain rose from 25.7% to 31.3%.

Simmons Experian notes that a simultaneous downward trend post-meltdown in the numbers of consumers with a household income of $75,000+ indicating that they try to eat gourmet food as often as possible seems to corroborate that their eating patterns were affected by the onset of the economic crisis.

In comparison, among consumers with household incomes between $40,000 and $99,000, the percentages reporting pre- and post-meltdown visits rose from 53.5% to 55.5% for one burger chain but showed a slight decline at the other chain, from 33.3% to 31.9%.

However, visits to both burger chains were flat to down a bit among consumers within the lowest income levels--suggesting that some consumers decreased or dropped visits even to fast-food chains. Reports of recent visits among households with incomes under $40,000 declined from 47.8% to 46.5% after the meltdown for one burger chain, and from 31.2% to 30.1% for the other chain.

On the other hand, the economic dive apparently did not make fast-food chicken any more attractive to the affluent demographic, at least based on the data for one such (unnamed) chain. Just 17.8% of consumers with a household income of $100,000+ reported visiting this chicken chain prior to the meltdown, and the number actually declined somewhat (to 15.7%) post-meltdown.

In comparison, percentages of those in the middle and lowest income levels who visited the chicken chain pre- and post-meltdown remained at about 20% and 19%, respectively.

As for family-format restaurants, where the range of pricing tends to vary by chain much more than is true among fast food chains, the data also point to a trend to trading down.

Data for one relatively upscale family chain showed pre- and post-meltdown visits staying stable among the middle income group (about 22.5% reporting visits). However, the percentage of those at $100,000+ making recent visits declined by about three percentage points (to 22.4%) post-meltdown, and the percentage of low-income consumers making visits declined by about four percentage points (to 13.4%).

Looking at data showing pre- and post-meltdown visit trends across all incomes, reported visits to the two most upscale family restaurant chains (based on the median household income of their customers) were basically flat: down 0.4% and 0.6%. Meanwhile, visits to the two less upscale chains (in descending order) were up 1.3% and 3.2%.

1 comment about "Affluent Consumers Eating More Fast Food ".
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  1. Garry Leigh from Snafu Consulting, LLC, February 13, 2009 at 9:25 a.m.

    Let them eat cake! Or fried pie for dessert.

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