Take Out, Delivery, and Dinning Out - Workout for your wallet and your gut

I am getting old. I work a lot. And I like to eat. These are just a few of my problems!

I eat out all the freaking time! Every week I hit the grocery store and buy a cart-full of groceries only to watch them collect dust in my cabinets or wither away in the fridge as I neglect them and opt for takeout or dinning out. Whatever happened to cooking and eating in?

Instead we choose to stand in line and order something that costs 10 times its value, trek it home and then consume a soggy cold meal. Alternatively we  stand in line (at a resto that does not take reservations …uhh!), just to be served by some snotty server that thinks he is a culinary master and eat the latest trendy taco, fusion poutine, fancy pizza or revamped mac and cheese.  The cost of eating and dining out is Ludacris ($$$$) and frankly not all that its hyped up to be!

Something happened somewhere along the lines – a home cooked meal lost its value.  Why? I don’t know. I appreciate a home cooked meal over all other meals - I dont care how fancy or elaborate it is. I would exchange Bobby Flay’s prime rib for a home cooked stew any day.  When someone invites me over, I pray that they will take some time to make something rather than order in – which seems to be the new norm.  Nothing says I love you, thank you, I value you, I thought of you and I appreciate you more than a home cooked meal.

With this in mind check out this wonderful article “Why Am I Dining Out So Often?” published in the New York Times by ERIC NAGOURNEY.

 

They were counting us out. They figured it was the millennials who were going to come in and save their bacon. But at the end of the day who’s filling up the booths at T.G.I. Fridays? Who’s getting the Lumberjack Slam breakfast at Denny’s? Who’s dialing up for pizza because, really, who feels like cooking tonight?
Baby boomers, that’s who.

A recent study by a market research company, the NPD Group, found that over the last five years, restaurant visits by boomers and older Americans have grown steadily, while those by millennials (basically people under 30) have declined.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Bonnie Riggs, NPD’s restaurant industry analyst, said the assumption had been that baby boomers would follow traditional patterns and spend less on dining out as they got older. “So even though there are a lot of them,” she said, “they were not going to provide the support to the industry that they had when they were younger. Well, lo and behold, that turned out not to be true.”

We’ll get to why that might be in a moment, but first a word of reassurance for our millennial friends: we are not trying to pick a fight. We know it has been a tough week for you. Just the other day, the folks at the Institute of Politics at Harvard put out a report describing you as disillusioned with major institutions and turned off by politicians. If you feel like just staying home and eating ramen, we understand.

But we’re heading out! Cause that’s what we boomers do.

In fact, that might help explain why older Americans now are hitting restaurants at an age when many people before them were slowing down. “The baby boomers, not surprisingly, are America’s most-experienced restaurant generation,” said Hudson Riehle, a senior vice president at the National Restaurant Association. (They also helped fuel the take-out food market, so the next time you see a pizza truck bearing down on you, thank a boomer.)

Simple economics also plays a role. Many boomers are retiring later than people did in generations before them, giving them more disposable income. And they are also likely to be earning more than younger people, many of whom have been especially hard hit by the economic downturn.

But some if it comes down to attitude. “The boomers happen to be very different than their predecessors,” Ms. Riggs said. “They act younger. They eat younger. They want to live forever.”

That seems unlikely to happen. In fact, restaurant owners who want to keep boomers’ business will have to think about things like readable menus for aging eyes and reduced ambient noise for aging ears, experts say. They will also need to make sure the furniture is comfortable. And a restaurant association study suggests that they may need to tread carefully when it comes to restaurant features that appeal to younger people, like electronic ordering systems at tables.

The NPD study found that boomers and older people have increased their share of restaurant traffic by six percentage points, while Millennials have decreased their share by the same amount. This suggests, the group said, that restaurants that had been aiming their marketing at the younger audience need to rethink their approach.

One of the ways NPD measures consumer behavior is with a longstanding survey involving 3,000 people at a time. “We go out every day and ask them what they did yesterday,” Ms. Riggs said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/booming/baby-boomer-restaurant-visits-are-up.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=dining&adxnnlx=1368192611-vhUGPVnji0lyaDq2CAA6WA