Consumer spends Rs 2,100 per month on eating out

Chennai: Consumers in metros and Tier I cities spend monthly an average Rs 2,100 per person on restaurants. While food delivery apps are growing rapidly, dine-in still caters to 70 per cent of the market.

The eating out market is growing at around 25 per cent year-on-year with the expansion of restaurant chains, emergence of food delivery apps and cloud kitchens.

“The family sizes are becoming smaller and when couples go out for work, there is no time available to cook food at home. Further, the number of single people eating out is growing as well,” said Ujjawal Chaudhry, engagement manager, e-tailing, RedSeer.

RedSeer finds that on an average, a person is spending Rs 2,100 monthly on eating out. While this spend pertains to metros and Tier I cities, the spend is higher in metros with Mumbai and Kolkata leading the table.

Dine-in is still the most preferred medium and accounts for 70 per cent of the monthly spend. Food delivered through apps accounts for 26 per cent and the remaining four per cent is spent on takeaways.

“With growing online penetration, consumers are getting comfortable with the online services. And hence we expect online food delivery apps to take up more and more share of the delivery spend of consumers,” said Chaudhry.

Food delivery apps are growing at a rate of 170 per cent year-on-year, while dine-in and takeways are growing at a much lower pace. Takeaways are seeing the least growth.

Food delivery apps have caught up with customers big time in the past couple of years. In this short duration, they have captured 26 per cent of the market and hence are expected to grab a higher share of eating out spend very fast.

The growth is also coming from the number of orders placed by customers outside the lunch and dinner hours. Consumers are ordering food during breakfast, evening snacks and late night.

In March quarter of 2017, the food delivery apps received 45,000 orders for food outside lunch and dinner time, which almost doubled to 85,000 by December quarter of 2017.

Further, daily delivery volumes have grown from 240,000 to 400,000 within three quarters of last year. Daily delivery volumes are expected to double in a year’s time.