US
Morning meals and snacks suffered the steepest transaction declines during the coronavirus crisis, according to The NPD Group. Millions of at-home workers agree on one thing: no one misses early-morning commutes enough to jump in the car and wait in line for breakfast. Foodservice sales of coffee and tea have suffered as a result.
According to Restaurant Dive, the number of transactions at breakfast locations was down 18% the week of June 7 compared to the same period last year. Lunch transactions declined by 11%, and customer transactions fell 12% at dinner during that same period, according to The NPD Group.
FSR Magazine reports that Revenue Management Solutions, using insights based on point-of-sale data, estimates total US breakfast traffic year-over-year slipped between negative 30–35%. Traffic has since leveled out around negative 15%. According to Datassential, customers’ trips to restaurants break down as follows:
The reversal is dramatic, as breakfast is the only restaurant daypart that has experienced sustained growth in visits during the past few years. In January and February with the nation at full employment, hundreds of thousands of workers visited quick-service chains every day, accounting for a 5% category growth during the past five years.
In a January press release, NPD reported Americans consumed 102 billion breakfasts and another 50 billion morning snacks in 2019. “The future of breakfast looks rosy too with forecast growth of breakfast goods,” according to the market researcher firm which published its “Future of Morning” study before the pandemic.
Sending two-thirds of the nations’ workers home dimmed that optimism in record time. Breakfast was the easiest meal to convert at home and suffered the steepest transaction declines as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Dunkin’, and Burger King saw comp sales slump during March, April, and May. Wendy’s, which spent significant marketing dollars promoting breakfast, reported same-store sales finally turned positive the last week of May.
Breakfast is an important hot tea occasion. Gallup has monitored employee preferences on working at home for several weeks, asking workers, “If your employer left it up to you, would you prefer to return to working at your office as much as you previously did, or work remotely a much as possible?”
No one knows the full impact of stay-at-home orders on buying behavior, but it’s clear that if half of the office workers no longer commute daily to offices on a fixed schedule, the morning routine will be altered for the duration of the pandemic — and likely forever.