Restaurants See Hot-and-Cold Relationships with Gen Z

Restaurants looking for steady, reliable customers may want to turn their focus away from younger consumers.

By the Numbers

Research from PYMNTS’ study “Digital Economy Payments: Consumers Buy Into Food Bargains,” which drew from a survey of a census-balanced panel of nearly 3,000 U.S. consumers, finds that Gen Z’s restaurant habits vary dramatically from month to month. For instance, 69% of Gen Z had made a restaurant purchase in the previous 30 days in November 2021, while only 54% said the same the following month. Fifty-nine percent did so in June 2022, compared to just 50% in July.

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The Data in Action

Fast-casual giant Chipotle Mexican Grill, for one, which has more than 3,000 locations across five countries, finds every year that the habits of college students, who now tend to be Gen Z, tend to fluctuate considerably with the time of year.

“For the first time in three years, [we] saw kind of normal college seasonality, meaning the college restaurants really performed exceptionally well during the school year, because they were all in-person,” the brand’s Chief Financial Officer, Jack Hartung, said on a call brand’s second quarter fiscal year 2022 financial results. “And then we saw seasonality that we haven’t seen in three years, where the college students go back home [over the summer] and they tend to eat less.”

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