Breakfast Traffic Continues To Increase Strongly, Says NPD

Breakfast/morning meal visits grew by 5% for the year ended June 2015, according to new data released by the NPD Group. Breakfast is the only foodservice meal period that has shown sustained traffic growth during the past several years. NPD’s CREST research shows the strong 2014-15 gain by breakfast came on top of a 2% increase during the same July-to-June period in 2013-14.

Overall traffic has been mostly flat and because of growing population, per capita visits have been declining. For example, for the same year-long period ended June 2015, lunch visits rose only 1% while dinner traffic was flat. NPD earlier announced that overall restaurant traffic was flat for the year ended May 2015.

The traffic increases have driven up shipments of classic breakfast foodservice fare including bacon, eggs and pancake mixes, according to NPD’s SupplyTrack research, which tracks every product shipped from major broadline distributors. For example, case shipments of bacon, which is also used on non-breakfast sandwiches, rose 7% during the year ended June, versus the previous year-period. Shipments of eggs and pancakes rose 5%.

Information on NPD research products can be found at npd.com.