Affluent Consumers Eating More Fast Food

Affluent consumers increased their visits to fast-food burger restaurants, but cut back on visits to the more upscale chains within the family restaurants category in the months following the economic "meltdown" in early October.
Those are among the restaurant-related trends emerging from newly released Experian Simmons data from the latest three-month wave of the Simmons National Consumer Study (Fall 2008).

The preliminary data reflects week-by-week trends for the period spanning Aug. 18 to Dec. 8 last year. Because the data are not yet weighted (fully projected to the U.S. population), absolute percentages are not claimed to be exact; however, the relative percentages are indicative of trends across time.

Following the meltdown (pegged at Oct. 3), the data show a distinct uptick in reported recent (last 30 days) visits to fast-food burger chains among households with incomes of $75,000 and above.

Furthermore, the uptrend was more marked among the highest incomes levels. For example, the percentage of consumers with household incomes of $100,000+ having visited one (unnamed) burger chain jumped from 50.1% pre-meltdown to 57.3% post-meltdown, and the percentage reporting visiting a second unnamed burger chain rose from 25.7% to 31.3%.

Simmons Experian notes that a simultaneous downward trend post-meltdown in the numbers of consumers with a household income of $75,000+ indicating that they try to eat gourmet food as often as possible seems to corroborate that their eating patterns were affected by the onset of the economic crisis.

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