When you've done your shopping at Costco and can't make it home without immediate sustenance, you can get a slice of pizza or a hot dog, while you're still inside the store, to tide you over until you can nuke something in your kitchen. But if you buy your groceries at Whole Foods or Metropolitan Market, you're in luck: before you even check out, you can pile your plate high with marinated vegetables or order up a noodle bowl and slurp it down on the spot. A full-service restaurant it's not, but that's precisely the point. Sales of prepared food inside supermarkets ("grocerants") is growing apace (over 10 percent a year) while full-service operators and even quick-serve spots (like Chipotle) are reporting flat numbers.
Delivery services (Dish, Lish, Bite Squad, Caviar, Uber, etc.) are obviously growing as well, though that part of the biz isn't yet sophisticated enough to provide nationwide figures. However, the market is changing (and isn't likely to go back). Steven Johnson of Foodservice Solutions, a Tacoma-based restaurant and hospitality consultancy, points out that half (half!) of Americans over the age of 18 are single. They're the ones buying prepared foods, rather than dining out or cooking large meals for themselves. Not every day, not every meal, no. But that's who's going through the line at the Whole Foods deli counter.
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