Food-to-go & eating out news

Following a successful trial of its Restaurant Hub concept at the Selly Oak store last year, Sainsbury’s (in partnership with Boparan Restaurant Group) has kicked off the nationwide roll out with a second opening at its Sydenham store in South East London. A total of 30 stores will be transformed into these dining destinations over the next year, with aspirations to roll the concept out to 15...

Nuro, a leading autonomous vehicle company, has formed a 10-year partnership with Uber Eats which will see its vehicles become an integral part of how the delivery company delivers food to consumers’ homes and other spaces. Launching in three US states Through this partnership, Uber Eats’ customers will be able to order meals and goods to be delivered by Nuro's purpose-built, self-driving v...

On 18th August, BrewDog opened their new flagship bar in Waterloo. Their biggest UK bar to date spans across two floors and contains an on-site microbrewery, podcast studio, duckpin bowling and even an ice-cream van! From the offset, their 50/50 messaging (50% of the profits are shared with all 200 employees) is prevalent outside and throughout the bar. Last week we visited the site to see wha...

With coffee consumption in South Korea nearly triple the global average, and an estimated one coffee shop for every 600 people in the country, the market offers great inspiration for the latest coffee trends and innovations. Here’s three things that caught our eye on a recent visit to Seoul. Robots at the ready Dilly was one of a variety of service robots we spotted in Incheon Internatio...

Grupo Nós, a joint venture between the Brazilian company Raízen and the Mexican business FEMSA Comercio, is rapidly expanding the OXXO convenience store chain in Brazil. The first store opened in the city of Campinas (São Paulo state) and as of July 2022, it had 124 units in operation. The OXXO convenience chain was launched in Mexico by FEMSA in 1978 and it has since accumulated 20,196 st...

We look at some of the latest checkout-free concepts to open, or soon to open, in North America, the range of formats they’re being developed within and assess where the various models go next. Key learnings Hybrid models will be the future, with shoppers able to enter and pay as in a regular supermarket, or use the cashierless technology There is no limit to the type of format where ...

In our latest food-to-go customer report on ShopperVista, we explored app usage in food-to-go. Around the same time we published this report, Pret talked about their 2021 and H1 2022 sales, revealing that digital sales accounted for 37% of 2021 sales.   Here we look at some of our key findings and how this relates to Pret’s digital growth. Time-pressed customers are driving app usage ...

On 28 th June, we attended the UK QSR Media Conference and Awards in London. IGD kicked off the day with insight into the economic outlook for the industry and an overview of our five eating out trends. Our chief economist James Walton focused on the current and future issues facing the industry, such as rising costs and labour shortages. Source: QSR Media On a more optimistic note,...

The food-to-go market will be worth £18.9bn at the end of 2022, an increase of 3% on 2019 levels according to our new UK food-to-go market 2022-2027 report. The return to growth has happened around six months earlier than previously anticipated, although the gains made during 2021/22 will be dampened by rising inflation and reduced discretionary spend from the cost-of-living crisis in 2023/24. ...

This year, a number of retailer meal deals have seen a change in their pricing strategy, and Amazon Fresh is the latest to follow suit. Earlier on in the year, Tesco increased their meal deal price from £3 to £3.50 , except for Clubcard members. This move would have pushed food-to-go customers without a Clubcard to the loyalty scheme, helping Tesco to collect more data on meal deal shopping t...