Beef Took Share From Seafood In 2012 As Consumers Economize
January 28, 2013 | 2 min to read
LEESBURG, VA – According to GuestMetrics, based on its proprietary database of POS transactions of over $8 billion dollars in transactions and over 250 million checks from restaurants and bars across the United States over the past two years, food dishes with protein (any type of meat or seafood) grew at a healthier clip in 2012 than food dishes without protein. “In analyzing the nearly 2/3 of dollar sales in restaurants that comes from food, we see that the split between protein and non-protein dishes is nearly identical (49% vs. 51%, respectively), but the protein dishes grew at a healthy 2.1% pace in 2012 versus 2011, while non-protein dishes grew a more tepid pace of 0.3%,” said Bill Pecoriello, CEO of GuestMetrics LLC. “Given protein dishes have an average price point about 35% above non-protein dishes, this should generally be a positive for restaurant operators.”
“To understand better what drove the growth of the protein dishes, we see the portion of sales was fairly evenly split between seafood (29%), chicken (29%), and beef (28%), followed by pork at 9% and a longer tail of less prevalent meats such as turkey, rabbit, duck, and venison at a combined 4%. However, these different categories of meat dishes experienced very different rates of growth in 2012,” said Peter Reidhead, VP of Strategy and Insights at GuestMetrics. “As a result, beef experienced the greatest share gain, coming primarily at the expense of seafood dishes, which is logical given the American consumer remained under pressure in 2012, and the average beef dish costs 10 percent less than the average seafood dish, at $12.89 for a beef dish versus $14.40 for seafood.”
“Looking specifically within the beef and seafood sub-categories, the strongest performers within beef were ribeye steaks, filet steaks, and burgers,” said Brian Barrett, President of GuestMetrics. “While within seafood, the dishes that caused the share loss were shrimp, bass, clams and tuna, though their sluggish performance was partially offset by strength among oysters, salmon, grouper and trout dishes. In our minds, this underscores the importance of restaurateurs having an up-to-date understanding of the constantly shifting tastes of the consumer, in order to make sure their menus best meet those changing demands, and that they optimally deploy their marketing dollars accordingly. In addition we think it’s key that operators know how their menu items are priced vs. their local market competition given how price sensitive consumers have been in the current economic environment. ”
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GuestMetrics, LLC is revolutionizing how the hospitality industry operates. Despite the dawn of the Digital Age having begun more than three decades ago, the hospitality industry essentially functions the same way it did centuries before. GuestMetrics has cracked the code by collecting data from tens of thousands of restaurants and turning billions of raw transactions into intelligible data that is fundamentally transforming the business operations of everyone from the independently-owned bar/restaurant on the corner, to multi-national chains, to the food & beverage companies that supply them. Please visit www.GuestMetrics.com for more information and to arrange for a free demonstration.
Source: GuestMetrics LLC