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American Eating Habits Are Changing Faster than Fast Food Can Keep Up (bloomberg.com)
Home cooking would be making a comeback if it ever really went away. From a report: Restaurants are getting dinged by the convenience of Netflix, the advent of pre-made meals, the spread of online grocery delivery, plus crushing student debt and a focus on healthy eating. Eighty-two percent of American meals are prepared at home -- more than were cooked 10 years ago, according to researcher NPD Group. The latest peak in restaurant-going was in 2000, when the average American dined out 216 times a year. That figure fell to 185 for the year ended in February, NPD said.
Don't be fooled by reports of rising U.S. restaurant sales at big chains like McDonald's. Increases have been driven by price hikes, not more customers. Traffic for the industry was down 1.1 percent in July, the 29th straight month of declines, according to MillerPulse data. "It's counterintuitive because you see a lot of things in the press about restaurant sales increasing," said David Portalatin, a food-industry adviser at NPD. "America does still cook at home." The shift is weighing on the fast-food industry. Eateries already are struggling with higher labor and rent costs that they're passing along to customers, which in turn makes home cooking more economical. McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Shake Shack and Wendy's have all raised prices in the past year.
Don't be fooled by reports of rising U.S. restaurant sales at big chains like McDonald's. Increases have been driven by price hikes, not more customers. Traffic for the industry was down 1.1 percent in July, the 29th straight month of declines, according to MillerPulse data. "It's counterintuitive because you see a lot of things in the press about restaurant sales increasing," said David Portalatin, a food-industry adviser at NPD. "America does still cook at home." The shift is weighing on the fast-food industry. Eateries already are struggling with higher labor and rent costs that they're passing along to customers, which in turn makes home cooking more economical. McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Shake Shack and Wendy's have all raised prices in the past year.
The whole article can be summed up in a single sentence... Americans are eating out less?
Why is this on Slashdot?
because they are poor.
Even when working 2 jobs.
Somethings gotta give...
We usually make food at our house, and have for years.
But over time it's gotten easier and easier to just say something like "I feel like some dish that has apples and rice" and boom, within seconds have some recipes to choose from.
It makes making food at home a lot easier when you don't need to do any work to dig up a recipe and can easily just bring together a few things you have on hand into a full meal.
Also the other aspect I would think helps is that produce in grocery stores is better than it used to be, with more variety as well. There's honestly a lot of stuff I make at home I'd way rather eat than most restaurant food.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Back during the Great Recession, I recall a survey that asked people what they'd cut back on in order to make ends meet. Right at the top of the list, people said they'd eat out less at restaurants. People are feeling the squeeze economically, so fewer people are eating out.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Eating out is suppose to be a special occasion thing, or for convince when you are not near a kitchen.
However for the most part we just cook our own meals. Guess what for a basic meal it isn't that hard and you can cook for a family for about as much as one serving at a fast food restaurant.
Heck when I was laid off back in 2008 I got a whole chicken for about $5.00 baked it. Then after we had our dinner, I shaved off the extras for sandwiches, and boiled it down with the bones to have chicken soup for a couple days. Yes by the end of the week I was sick of chicken, but it was a good idea that I had money to pay the mortgage and car payments. Granted I was lucky enough to get an other job in a couple of weeks, however I needed to save up.
For those pesky millennials who are still trying to save up for this middle class life style, cooking at home vs wasting money on prepared food is a good plan.
Even if you are not a chief of even a good cook you can normally make yourself a decent meal. Unlike the boomer time and before, we now can google how to cook nearly anything now.
This is how our grandparents/great grandparents lived, very few went to a restaurant every day for their meals. It was a special thing, for every once in a while. The Boomer generation who didn't want to force women to cook, and were too manly for the men to do the cooking, had a generation who ate out more. And now in their 70's suffering from diabetes and demanding their Social Security Checks or are still working, because where did all their money go.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I now work white trash jobs. Yes, plural.
All of my co-workers buy fast food because they are jumping from job to job and work too hard and too long to have enough time to cook for themselves. Yes, too hard. They work harder than any CEO who gets an eight figure salary and bonuses.
Why am I stuck in those jobs? Because I was a good employee. I drank my employer's Kool-Aid, devoted myself to my company's "technology" and focused on my employer.
When my employer decided that what we did can be done cheaper overseas, I lost my job. However, since my skills were very very specific to my employer - because I was so loyal - they weren't transferable: or so I'm told.
I should have drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid years ago. I'd be OK now. Or better yet, never went into technology. I should have went into finance. Yeah sure, '08 -'10 sucked - but they're humming along again!
Kids: your employer will cast you to the side on a heartbeat. Don't ever - EVER - think you're essential.
It will be a golden time for Aldi.
Here in Germany, simple home cooking and buying cheap food at Aldi/Lidl/... is the normal everyday routine for every student or poor person, and richer people also still prefer home-cooked meals, and only eat out if they have less time than money.
To us, US culture is rather strange. You really go out to eat each day, every day? And if you "cook" at home, it’s ready-made convenience food? How do you even survive? Isn't that extremely expensive? Don't you miss real food?
And then we hear, how much you Americans are forced to work, just to survive.
Guys, you're the closest thing to enslaved one can be, without officially being enslaved!
NORMAL is 8-9 to 16-18, with 1/2 to 1.5 hours of lunch break, and going for a pee, a snack, some fresh air, or a chat whenever you like, because what matters is the end result. If not necessary, you can come between 7 and 10, and leave when you're done for the day or it's too late. (>18:00 is too late.)
NORMAL is 20-30 holiday days a year, and ideally Christmas and summer holiday bonuses. And your boss telling you to go home or to the doc if you do not feel well. With an employer-provided healthcare ensurance that you can keep even if you switch jobs or become unemployed. And getting paid for the free/sick days too!
NORMAL is not being harassed by your boss if you don't work hard enough. (Or do you get to harass him to, if he doesn't pay you high enough??)
(And GOOD is having not just a job, but a profession. Something that matters, and that is your passion (which kinda implies that it matters).)
And "hard working" is a BAD thing. Only stupid people and slaves work hard. Especially on /., with its computer experts, that should be clear. Smart people's goal is to get as much done as necessary with as little effort as possible. (But not less, as that is when efficiency becomes laziness.)
The best company is one, that is so good at that, that everyone can sit back and relax, while the money comes in.
Your boss knows that. Because that's exactly the point of management. Look busy while commandeering people around, and calling their work yours. YOU are their automation. That's why they want you to work hard. So they don't.
Sure, there are bosses that actually work hard. But only at small companies or unsuccessful companies where the boss gives a fuck. But the bigger the company, the more that "hard work" only becomes the "work" of making others work for you.
*ramble ramble ramble* ... ... It's true though.
There have been continuous price increases in the United States.
The grocery stores and food producers are extremely hostile toward customers. Cans of Tuna, for example, went from 6.5 ounces to 6 ounces and the reduction continued to 3 ounces. They found a weakness in the customers. The customer may remember the price, but may not notice that the can size has been reduced by 0.5 ounce, and the amount of water has increased.
It's good to make your own bread. For example: Adm Whole Wheat Flour # 17688, $13.98 / Unit (50 lb). When you buy bread, it may be $2.50 per pound or more, and the weight includes the water in the bread. You can buy the flour used to make bread for $0.28, 28 cents per pound.
There are many examples like that.
For me it's more about eating healthy than saving money. Restaurants don't really care about your health, they care about their profit. They will use ingredients that taste good but aren't necessarily healthy, so that you will like it and visit frequently.
"I eat exactly *0* homecooked meals a week. My time is worth more to me than the $$ is costs to get a (good) restaurant meal. "
Unless you live in NYC and go around the corner to your fave restaurant (and even if this is true), I don't believe you actually save much time given your "good restaurant meal". It is fairly simple to prepare a very high quality meal with a wide variety of foods in well under an hour, in many cases under 30minutes. No "good restaurant" experience that I know of is less than 60mins, usually at least 90mins. And if it is truly "good" and in NYC, you are going to be waiting for a table for at least 30mins.
So no, even if time > $$$ (which I might agree in many scenerios), I don't believe you are actually saving time. The caveat would be decent take out/delivery where you still eat at home, but you can work while a restaurant cooks and delivers.
I just finished making lunches for the week.
Grilled garlic and herb chicken breast sliced up over pasta tossed in roast garlic olive oil. Total cost, $13*, time spent, 20 minutes.
Eating out at McDonalds or Wendys, processed food, fillers, tastes bland, high in fat. Total cost, $11-15*/meal, 15 minutes to drive and get it.
So in the end, it's $50-75* a week to eat out, vs $13* for home cooked.. for better food, and substantially less time spent.
* Prices are Canadian, YMMV.
Tiny? About 1/3 of adult Americans have college degrees, but here's the kicker: about 60% of adult Americans have attended college, but a large fraction of them never finish. If you include technical schools that don't grant degrees but which students take out loans to attend, the number goes up further.
Americans owe over 1.3 trillion dollars in student loan debt -- more than they owe in credit card debt by a good margin. That's why cracking down on unscrupulous or misleading educational institutions is important. Education -- both college and trade -- is a huge industry with a big impact on the economy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The trend in New Zealand is weekly delivered food and recipes.
I've seen that approach for a while in the U.S., in various forms.
But it seems to stay niche. in part because you are at the mercy of what they decide you should eat, along with you not being the one picking out produce.
The last aspect is what really has killed it for me every time, there's always something about the stuff that is delivered that I would have never picked that item at the store - like overly wilted lettuce, or especially bananas that are way, way to overripe for me.
It's really 1000x better to go into a store and see what looks good, so it totally puts the balance away from delivery being convenient or useful if you can't rely on what is being delivered to be usable or good.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When was the standard tip ever 10%? In 1960 in the US the tip for average service was 15%.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I eat exactly *0* homecooked meals a week. My time is worth more to me than the $$ is costs to get a (good) restaurant meal.
Given how unhealthy most restaurant meals are, you're probably hacking far more time off the end of your life than you'd ever save by not cooking.
I have noticed over the past 5 years that the fast food is tasting worse and worse. We have slowly stopped eating fast food because of this. Even my kids that LOVE fast food are telling me it is tastes worse than ever. In our household we now don't eat any fast food (McD, Wendy, BKing, Taco Bell, etc.) anymore. We do go to some good locally made food restaurants but that has come way down from once or twice a week to once a month, and are are not going to any of the sit down chains either, seems their prices have become way to high and now servers want a 25% tip, just can't do it. So I would agree that people are cooking more at home, but I wonder if it has more to do with the food tasting so bad now-a-days. ????
Arby's did a good thing by selling Gyros. The Lamb "traditional" Gyros are damn good and I hope they're permanent this time.
Pretty solid nutrition, too, especially for fast food. I ate worse in my teen years.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
I'm sorry that happened to you. Sounds like it was, and is, pretty rough. I hope something like that never happens to you again.
To avoid really bad things happening, it might be helpful to be very clear about the cause.
Hurricanes happen. Businesses get destroyed. Laws like HIPPA and GDPR change industries so that some products and even companies no longer fit, or the changes give new competitors an opportunity. Technology changes, major contracts get cancelled. Any product or company can become infeasible at any time. Even large companies can fail quickly. No job is guaranteed to stay the same or stay around, no matter how much your employer might want it to.
> However, since my skills were very very specific to my employer - because I was so loyal - they weren't transferable
I believe you've misdiagnosed the cause. You didn't end up with only skills that are useful only to one part of one business because you were loyal. You put yourself in a position where you'd eventually become unemployable either because:
A) you were unaware that change happens, major change, unpredictably
Or
B) You were short-sighted
Knowing that things WILL change, that whatever product you work with or work on will eventually get cancelled, someone thinking long term could do a few things:
Think about what job you'd like to have in five years, assuming you need to make a move.
Look over related job ads and note which skills employers look for.
Make a list of the skills you're missing.
Find opportunities within your company, in open source, or volunteering to learn the skills you're missing.
Had you been prepared for the fact that at some point your company will be gone, and that could be because of an accounting scandal *tomorrow*, you wouldn't be screwed whatever happens.
Setting yourself up for catastrophe if your job ever changes isn't loyalty, it's short-sighted.
I keep my list of needed skills in Wunderlist. Actually I have two lists of job requirements to work on. One is skills that show up often in the want ads for my industry. The other list is what my two target companies are looking for. I'm loyal to my employer - I don't stab them in the back and I don't intend to leave any time real soon. I've ALSO thought about what happens when eventually I do need a new job, what work I want to do, and for which company. Boeing and Lockheed Martin fit what I'm looking for, so I'm keeping an eye out for opportunities to learn the things Boeing wants people to know.
Perhaps I'll be at my current employer for the next three years. If so, I'll then walk into a Boeing interview saying "yes, for each skill you want, I have at least three years of experience in each one". (Obviously these aren't skills that ONLY apply to Boeing - Lockheed is looking for many of the same skills, as is Bell Helicopter).
PS - if anyone works in IT or software development at those companies, particularly information security, I'd love to talk to you.
... loses its "flair" once it becomes commonplace. Who would've thunk? MD's always was about indulging in something generally regarded as unhealthy and not something to do every day. That was no different in the 70ies when I was a small kid and we'd go there to treat the family to some junk food.
Perpetual fast food has turned the US population into a flock of land-whales and the growing counter movement are hipster foodies and minimalist Paleo and quantified self geeks.
That sort of thing only works emotionally if you actually prepare your meals yourself and steer clear of junk food.
By and large this is a good thing IMHO.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I suspect the number of "special eating needs" derives much more from the psychological than biological (see "gluten intolerance").
No wonder so many people get trapped in a cycle of poverty.
You think eating out is what traps people in poverty? You might want to learn about poverty traps and their causes. There are lots of causes of poverty. Eating out is not a meaningful cause.
That's more than every other day! And the latest figure is still more than every other day.
If you look at the number of restaurants out there (and the obesity statistics) this should not surprise anyone. People like to look down their nose publicly at McDonalds and the like but the simple fact is that vast numbers of people eat at these places routinely regardless of what they actually say. You think they stay in business because people are eating at home? People LIKE to eat out, they like fast food, and honestly a lot of the food tastes better than what many people can cook themselves.
WTF people, the fastest way to save money is to not eat out; doesn't everyone know that??
Several points on that. Basically your thesis isn't necessarily supported by the facts.
1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that eating healthy tends to be more expensive than eating badly, at least in the short term. Even if you do manage to save money (which can be done) it's going to come at the cost of an investment of time and energy.
2) There is also evidence to suggest that eating out can be cheaper than eating at home for many.
3) Eating at home requires having the time to prepare the food. Speaking as someone with a young child and a working wife this time can be hard to come by for many people even if you would prefer it.
4) Eating at home does not necessarily equal eating healthier nor does it necessarily equal costing less. It CAN but it often doesn't.
5) Many people don't know how to shop economically in grocery stores and grocery stores have no incentive to help.
6) Food culture is as subject to fads as anything else. One should expect to see variation over time in where and how people eat their food.
The reason this market is dominated by prepackaged convenience foods is government subsidies. Take all that pasta and cheese; it's just subsidized wheat and milk industrially converted into a highly palatable food that is cheap because it's largely already been paid for with tax dollars.
This is not correct. That same wheat and cheese in their "raw" form share the same government subsidies but people don't buy those. The reason processed foods are cheap is because they can be produced at massive economies of scale, they don't require special handling or storage or refrigeration, they can use artificial (read cheap) ingredients, packaging is standardized, and they don't perish on shelves. A large company can buy cheese FAR cheaper than you or I can because they buy more of it and they can process it into food products FAR cheaper than you or I can because they have specialized mass production equipment to do so. So much cheaper that even with the packaging and marketing and branding it's still cheaper than you can do it yourself from raw ingredients even if you don't count your meal preparation time.
While there are problems with government subsidies in foods in relation to healthy versus unhealthy options, this is a minor consideration in regards to why processed foods are as cheap as they are. McDonalds can sell you a hamburger with a bun and condiments for $1 for reasons that have almost nothing to do with tax policy. It's all about economies of scale and standardization of products, packaging and handling. I can make a BETTER hamburger than McDonalds but I cannot make a cheaper one. Tax policy is not the reason why.
It takes exactly 6 minutes to grill the chicken to 170 degrees
Maybe if you slice it to be as thin as deli meat and don't care much about the end result. Properly cooking a reasonably thick chicken breast will take quite a lot longer than that. Roasting a whole chicken typically takes 30-40 minutes in an oven. Oh, and unless you are cooking dark meat, 170F chicken is (slightly) overcooked.
Ok, so it takes 32 minutes.. big deal.
32 minutes can be a lot of time to some people. Right now I have a young child under the age of 1 at home and my wife and I both work alternate shifts. There are quite a few days where 30 minutes to prepare even a simple meal is an unattainable luxury to us. If you can do it it is time well spent but it's not an easy thing to do sometimes. Not to mention I'm not particularly interested in eating exactly the same thing every day for an entire week. If you can then more power to you but I have a hard time with that.
Point being, it's still a hell of a lot quicker than spending 75 minutes a week driving to get food, only to have to scarf it down once I get back to the office.
Where are you driving? I have three fast food restaurants literally within walking distance of my office and even if I drive there every day it would take me less time than the 30 minutes you spent prepping food at home. Not to mention that several nearby restaurants deliver. Don't get me wrong, I'm very supportive of making your own food but it's pretty hard to beat the convenience of restaurants and fast food. It certainly doesn't save time to cook at home.
I am approaching my 6th year eating low carb / high fat. STILL feeling the best I have felt in my life, and I am in my late 40s. I know people like to call it a fad, but high-carb low-fat bullshit is the fad. We only eat huge amounts of grain/starch carbs in the absence of real food. We've only been farmers for 10k years, yet as a species we've been evolving for millions of years. We didn't get to where we are by accident. I've also been an avid home cook for 20+ years. Once you learn the basic principles, you can use them the rest of your life. Teach a man to fish, as it were.
This is supposed to be a site for nerds, and if you REALLY want to nerd out on something read up on low-carb and a lot of the research going on. Learn more about lipidology and heart disease. Don't like reading? Listen to some of the podcasts on peterattiamd.com. Seriously fascinating stuff, lots of links to as much as you would want to learn and as deep as you would want to go.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Cooking for one, it's probably cheaper to eat out for some meals.
You don't need the "probably" qualifier. It's DEFINITELY cheaper for quite a few types of meals. Not all, but a large number of them.
Cooking for five. It's never cheaper to eat out.
Not true at all. Again it depends on the meal. I can feed a family of 5 very cheaply at the local pizza joint for example. Not saying the food will be better but there is no single answer to the question.
We don't really have "mars chokolade bars" in the US, at least we don't call the kind you're referring to a Mars Bar. Perhaps you're thinking of Scotland?
If you're looking for a vile American fried treat, then look no further than Deep-fried butter.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
One of the very best thing I've ever done was to start using Chick-fil-a's mobile app, rather than waiting in line... not because I have anything against the in-person ordering experience, nor even because of a time difference between the two experiences. (There is often little or no time advantage, actually.) Rather, the critical factor which makes ordering from my phone worth doing, is the digitally e-mailed receipt. With all of those receipts already in a digital format and handily sent to me automatically, I don't have to really think about things like historic price increases, until the moment that such a thing becomes important to me. Nor do I have to guess at how often I frequent a given restaurant/store; the answer to that question is a simple word search away.
Obviously, you could also go with one of those apps that attempts to read your paper receipts and collates them for you... assuming that you're going to consistently remember to add your latest receipt to the app. But I'm not Sheldon; I'm not nearly obsessive enough to remember every single time. For those of us who are more Leonard and less Sheldon, letting the computer do a bit more of the work for us is, perhaps, a good thing.
As an aside: Chick-fil-a doesn't seem to change their prices very often; that's vaguely interesting to me, especially in light of this particular article. (Not that I ever actually eat at McDonalds, anyway...)