Restaurants add breakfast items, but consumers aren't biting
March 12, 2010
Breakfast has become a hot spot for competition across the food industry, according to market research firm Mintel, Chicago, and although restaurants added 460-plus new breakfast items to their menus in 2009 — more than in 2007 or 2008 — they face a problem.
Half of consumers surveyed by Mintel in November 2009 said they’re spending less on restaurant breakfasts versus 2008. Just one in 10 are spending more. Among survey respondents 47% said they don’t eat breakfast out during the week at all while 45% said they don’t eat breakfast out on weekends.
Restaurant breakfast and brunch sales fell 3.4% from 2007 to 2009, Mintel stated, and the firm expects the category to grow only modestly through 2011. However, Mintel forecasts that the breakfast foodservice market will expand by 13% from 2009 to 2014.
For refrigerated and frozen food retailers, the time seems to be at hand to consolidate the gains in the breakfast segment they made as consumers cut restaurant spending during the recession. For the 52 weeks ended Dec. 26, 2009, frozen breakfast category sales gained 5.8% to $2.04 billion, according to The Nielsen Co., New York, at food, drug and mass-market retailers including Walmart.
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