Americans' Spending on Dining Out Just Overtook Grocery Sale

Pass the menu, hold the shopping cart. Grocery stores are finding it harder to make headway with shoppers as a surge in spending at restaurants over the past several months signals Americans are more likely to ditch the brown bags in favor of doggy bags.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... -time-ever

So much for the impact of all the cooking shows, eh?

Well this is in that data about millenials:

"They tend to favor fast food, deli food and pizza restaurants….."

There's not much menu passing for fast food.

I just read the article, and the commerce department does not factor in food sales at Target, Walmart, Costco and Sam's Club, when it compiles how much people spend on food at grocery stores. Apparently even when you factor that in though, people still spend more on dining out. It does mention that this increase is only occurring in millenials, and not in Baby Boomers.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/target-hire ... 1428950954

One-Fifth of Target's Sales ($73 BILLION) are pulled in from Grocery Sales...
add in COSTCO's #'s and
Farmers Markets and Back-of-Truck-Fruit Vendors,and other "off-the-Radar"
Grocery/Produce Sales #'s
the scale will tip towards Grocery Sales...

jus sayin

Well, but -

Dining out (even fastfood) costs more than buying the grocery store equivalent & cooking it at home.

The graph accompanying the article shows no decline in grocery sales.

So ... ?

Then you have the hybrids.

For example, HyVee does a good portion of its sales in prepared foods. In all their stores, they have a minimum of six prepared food formats in each store. Kroger's Marketplace has been rolling out something similar. Ditto for Wegmans. How are those counted?

How much grocery store sales is non-food??

jlawrence01 wrote:Then you have the hybrids.

For example, HyVee does a good portion of its sales in prepared foods.

Speaking of prepared foods and eating out I've been shopping Tony's on Lincoln and Foster, and buying and eating from their roasters and salad bar, on a regular basis. Newer thing to do for me. Run in grab, hot whole chicken, hot spanish, rice, rack of mushy ribs and 30 things from cold salad bar to eat as soon as I walk thru the door at home.

Doesn't seem to me they are making a ton of money on those SKU's. Yeah when I eat at Whole Foods I can see them making money but Tony's charges under 6.75 for a whole roasted chicken, rack of baby backs is under 9 bucks, and salad bar is under 6 bucks a pound. I can barely buy the chicken fresh for 6.75. Are they selling it as a loss leader to get me into the store?

kenji wrote:Doesn't seem to me they are making a ton of money on those SKU's. Yeah when I eat at Whole Foods I can see them making money but Tony's charges under 6.75 for a whole roasted chicken, rack of baby backs is under 9 bucks, and salad bar is under 6 bucks a pound. I can barely buy the chicken fresh for 6.75. Are they selling it as a loss leader to get me into the store?

As I am no longer close to wholesale prices, I do not know that what they are making profit wise on the chicken. However, Aldi is selling Tyson chickens for about $0.95/# for about 3.5# birds. I would think that Tony's probably has about $4.50 in the bird.

However, who goes in and buys just the bird? Last year, as I did not have internet at home for several months, I spent a lot of time in a Kroger's (Fry's) Marketplace store. Their Starbucks seating area is immediately across from the chicken counter. People come in and buy the chicken, add on three or four sides, a package or two of King's Hawaiian Rolls and a couple of 2 liter bottles of soda. Their margins on the chicken are not great; however, for the whole meal, they are doing very well.

$6/lb for the salad bar? Go through each of the ingredients and see how many normally sell for anything close. If you notice, you will see that the expensive ingredients are generally in smaller containers toward the end of the bar or they are stuck in the back where it is harder to get to. And I was beat up by my customers when I was charging $0.20/ oz years ago.

I was at one of the now-shuttered Fresh and Easy (formerly Tesco's attempt to take over the US grocery market) locations in Tempe, AZ last week. I would say that prepared food was 25% of their sales.

My brother and I visited one of Kroger's test stores in Cincinnati over Thanksgiving. They were charging $6/ lb for wedge salads. I mean how hard is it to make a wedge salad???

What is scary to me is the complete lack of cooking ability (or lack of willingness to cook) these days. Smart supermarkets have determined this and are aggressively pursuing those customers.

==============

Back to HyVee. In my recent travels through Iowa and Nebraska, I would say that 75% of my meals out have been at a hyVee. The food is generally well prepared, the service is excellent and the portions are ample. To me it is of much better quality and value that the Maid-rite's and the Runza's in those states

jlawrence01 wrote: I mean how hard is it to make a wedge salad???

Obviously not hard for most of us here.

At home we cook a majority of dishes here/home from scratch. But....I do know looking at the food rotation here that a bag of mixed greens and even things like celery and chopped up fruit can go from really nice to really crappy in about a week. More so for things like strawberries....so that impacts the net cost of all the salads we make/eat here at home when I'm tossing product in the garbage.

I also think it's a great thing for most Americans to have the huge choices when eating from a place like Tony's salad bar, grab one of those brown cardboard bins a lid throw a bunch of fresh stuff in, spend 5 bucks, and feed good vegetables to everyone at home as side dishes. No can opener, pot of hot water or microwave needed.

I see it as a "great fast food" for those eating at home.

Cooking at home, most of the time, for a table of two, I have found that making judicious use of a dehydrator and the freezer often helps clear 'fridge space and reduce spoilage. The problem I am finding these days is time management--it's so easy to get involved in other projects that dinner sometimes takes a back seat. At that point prepared foods, frozen pizza (gasp!) and Trader Joes provide welcome relief. Dining out doesn't often work for this couple as our (I hesitate to say it) skills and culinary demands trump those of most nearby restaurants.

jlawrence01 wrote:

kenji wrote:
$6/lb for the salad bar? Go through each of the ingredients and see how many normally sell for anything close.

I don't think anyone questions that it's a good deal for the store, but it is also a good deal for the consumer in many cases. My wife makes fairly awesome salads and there's generally an economy that's enjoyed as you scale it up (when we make a salad for 20 or 30 people for a barbecue) but it's not as true when you scale down. When she wants a quick salad for dinner, the $6/lb ends up being a good deal when you compare it to the cost of its component ingredients - most of which are not sold in small quantities - as well as the time for prep. It's called convenience food for a reason.

Here is a rebuttal to the Bloomberg Study from Brian Todd, who also is president/CEO of The Food Institute:

Americans are not spending more dining out than for groceries, contrary to the report by Bloomberg. They are, however, not always doing so at their local supermarket. We have been tracking retail sales of food for decades and restaurant and bar sales in March did outpace sales at grocery stores by about $2.54 billion. However, consumers spent about $25 billion more for groceries at other retail venues selling food and consumable products that were not included in the numbers used by Bloomberg.

Breaking it down, The Food Institute estimates $17 billion more was spent for groceries at warehouse clubs and supercenters, another $6 billion at other food retailers like butchers, bakers and specialty food stores, approximately $1.5 billion at drug stores, and nearly half a billion online.

Adding the above into the mix puts actual grocery sales at around $75 billion in March - 42% more than eating and drinking place sales. And that doesn’t even include groceries sold at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target’s traditional locations.

http://www.morningnewsbeat.com/