What you need to know
Eating out has remained a favourite area of discretionary expenditure, together with going out, over a number of years. Helped by this and rising real incomes, the market grew by 2.6% in 2015 to reach £35.7 billion. Affordability, however, remains a key consideration, helping to buoy the growth of casual dining venues in particular.
Being freshly prepared and handmade emerge as the two main factors deemed to signal dish quality, making these key messages for operators to convey to customers to prove their value-for-money credentials.
Products 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, Franco Manca
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 others 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).
