CHICAGO -- While many millennials are trading up from fast-food chains such as McDonald's for fast-casual chains such as Chipotle, even more of them are trading "down" for food at convenience stores. That is the conclusion of an analysis of millennial out-of-home eating habits conducted by NPD Group and first shared with USA Today.
For food and beverage stops, convenience stores are almost twice as important to millennials (18 to 34) as fast-casual restaurants, Harry Balzer, chief food industry analyst at NPD, told the newspaper.
"Millennials are cheap--they're no different from anyone else," he said. "What we mostly do in our lives is get food as fuel--we don't usually go out for exciting eating adventures."
Convenience stores accounted for 11.1% of millennial food and beverage stops in 2014, compared to 7.7% in 2006. By comparison, fast-casual accounted for 6.1% in 2014 vs. 3.1% in 2006, according NPD's annual "Eating Patterns in America" study.
As Millennial use of convenience stores and fast-casual chains grows, fast food is getting squeezed from above and below in price, said Balzer. Just as a generation of 18- to 34-year-olds changed the restaurant industry by popularizing "fern bars" in the late 1970s, a new group of them is reshaping the industry again, he says, particularly by turning to convenience stores, which have increasingly been upgrading their foodservice programs.
"They've discovered that you can eat out at the convenience store," he said.
Millennials are more likely to stop and buy items--particularly food items--at convenience stores than any other age group, Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), told the paper. "That's why the future of convenience stores is food--not gas."
At the same time, said the report. baby boomers have not fully figured out the evolution of convenience stores.
"If you're 50 or over, you still think the convenience store is primarily a gas station," said Balzer.
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