What you need to know
The eating out market continues to grow modestly and has largely held its own as a key area of discretionary expenditure. However, the share of people deeming eating out as their top spending priority shows a downward trend.
Frequency of eating out is on the rise linked to the casualisation of dining out of home. Despite rising consumer confidence, the different dining out sectors face challenges. For example, food’s share of total pub sales has been increasing as many leading operators remain committed to growing their food sales, but this sector faces a threat from the expansion of casual dining venues.
Restaurants are better placed than takeaways to benefit from rising consumer confidence and spending power in 2015 due to the placed on dining out of home; a quarter of diners would be willing to buy more expensive dishes at restaurants, whilst a fifth would do the same at takeaways/home deliveries.
Covered in this report
The scope of this report is the eating out market within the UK (excluding commercial catering, eg canteens, contract catering). This consists of various market segments, which are defined as:
Fast food – this essentially refers to outlets that serve food prepared and served quickly to order with a limited menu. The main fast food outlets include:
burger bars, eg McDonald’s and Burger King
pizza restaurants, takeaway and home delivery outlets, eg Pizza Hut, PizzaExpress and Domino’s Pizza
pasta chains, eg Bella Italia
chicken chains, eg KFC
fish and chip shops
other types of fast food such as jacket potatoes, kebabs.
Pub catering – includes food served in pubs and in pub restaurant chains such as Brewers Fayre and Harvester.
In-store restaurants – these outlets comprise a wide range of foodservice venues located within retail outlets including among other supermarkets and department stores.
Roadside catering – these outlets operate at MSAs (motorway service areas) and on major roads, with the leading operators being the Compass Moto brand and Little Chef.
Hotel catering – comprising hotel restaurants, bars and room service.
Other – other formats included within the scope of this report are cafés, coffee shops etc.
Some sectors such as roadside and in-store catering have been identified separately but often include elements of overlap with other sectors such as fast food and chain restaurants. However, please note that the market sizes shown exclude overlapping outlets. For instance, burger bars found in MSAs have been excluded from the total roadside market figures and have been included in the burger bar segment instead.
Hotel catering includes sales of beverages. As far as possible, sales of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages have been excluded from all other sectors and sub-sectors, apart from coffee shops. Takeaway foodservice outlets are included as part of the market, but sales of food through retail outlets such as supermarkets are excluded (apart from in-store catering venues).
