The Burger is the Heavy Artillery in Restaurant Lunch Wars

There is a battle for restaurant lunch visits between casual dining restaurants and quick service restaurants, and the weapon of choice between these contenders is America's all-time favorite restaurant food, burgers, reports The NPD Group, a leading global information company. Burgers have helped casual dining restaurants increase lunch visits by closing the price gap with quick service restaurants, according to NPD's Checkout Tracking, which provides omni-channel receipt-based information from the same consumers over time.

The burger, which has racked up 8.9 billion servings* ordered at restaurants and foodservice outlets as of year ending June 2015, can meet a wide variety of restaurant customers' needs from simple and classic to high-end gourmet with a little dressing down or up. Its perennial popularity, affordability, flexibility, and ability to provide a beef menu item while offsetting higher beef costs are among the reasons why this utility food has become the heavy artillery in the battle for lunch visits.

For casual dining restaurants, burgers have been able to level the playing field with quick service restaurants on price. For example, the average price of a burger at casual dining is $9.02 and is $5.62 at fast casual. However, the gap closes when considering that fries typically come with a burger order at casual dining restaurants and need to be purchased separately at fast casual restaurants. The price of adding fries at a fast casual concept slaps on an average of $2.89 to the check, based on NPD's Checkout Tracking research. Also compensating for the slightly higher burger price at casual dining restaurants is that consumers are factoring in the value of a full service sit down lunch meal.

Burger servings ordered at casual dining restaurants were up 3 percent in the year ending June 2015 period compared to year ago, and were the segment's only menu category to grow in servings. In contrast, burger servings ordered at quick service restaurants were flat, reports NPD's ongoing foodservice market research CREST.

The burger military offensive did, in fact, help casual dining restaurants gain lunch traffic ground in the year ending June 2015 period. Lunch visits to casual dining restaurants increased by 2 percent in the period, the segment's first traffic increase at lunch in five years, based on NPD's CREST foodservice market research. Quick service restaurant lunch visits increased by 1 percent in the period compared to year ago.

"It is an effective strategy on the part of casual dining and other full service restaurants to menu more burger items," says Bonnie Riggs, NPD restaurant industry analyst. "Successful casual dining operators offer burgers that meet the tastes of their customers and are priced competitively. As a result, they gain lunch visitors."
-30-

*Source: The NPD Group/CREST, year ending June 2015

About The NPD Group
The NPD Group provides global information and advisory services to drive better business decisions. By combining unique data assets with unmatched industry expertise, we help our clients track their markets, understand consumers, and drive profitable growth. Sectors covered include automotive, beauty, consumer electronics, entertainment, fashion, food / foodservice, home, luxury, mobile, office supplies, sports, technology, toys, and video games. For more information, visit http://www.npd.com and npdgroupblog.com. Follow us on Twitter: @npdgroup.

About Checkout Tracking
Checkout Tracking, which launched in November 2014, is the first service to provide detailed information on consumer buying behavior, based on receipts for both online and brick-and-mortar retail purchases from the same consumers over time. Checkout Tracking delivers precise category, brand, and item-level purchase detail linked to buyers and their demographics, useful for analyzing competitive market baskets and identifying purchase patterns. Information is collected from more than 50,000 consumers from NPD's receipt-harvesting mobile phone app and the scanning of more than 2 million active in-boxes for e-receipts through Slice Intelligence.

To post a comment, you must register and login.