The NPD Group's foodservice industry specialists in nine countries deliver the richest restaurant information and insight available. The world's leading foodservice companies rely on this robust, ongoing picture of global foodservice habits and trends as input for their critical decisions. What can it do for your business?

It may be surprising that of the Big Five countries in Western Europe, Spain is where people spend the most on eating away from home. The average Spaniard spends 987 € -that's almost a thousand Euros for prepared food and drinks per person, per year! Only Great Britain approaches Spain's spending on away-from-home food and beverages at an average of 960 € per person, per year. The average Italian spends 913 € each year.

Among the Big Five, the countries with the lowest spend in away-from-home food and drink are Germany and France, where the average inhabitant spends less than 800 € per year.

The breakfast market is one of the bright spots for the foodservice industry in Japan, and many foodservice operators are trying to identify business opportunities in this market. Office workers make up the largest segment of the Japanese breakfast market. Among office workers, 40 percent of away-from-home breakfasts are consumed at restaurants; 60 percent are taken-out from restaurants or retail stores, mainly convenience stores.

When looking at take-out breakfast meals eaten by office workers in Japan, 75 percent are consumed at office desks - that means consumption at the desk is 45 percent of the total. Remember that 40 percent of away-from-home breakfasts are eaten at restaurants, so consumption at the office desk in Japan is larger than at any restaurant chain!

Why do Japanese office workers eat breakfast at their desks? They begin their workdays by reading a lot of email messages, and eating breakfast while reading email is an efficient way to use their time. Exploring breakfast at the office desk is a great opportunity for restaurant operators and foodservice retailers in Japan.

In the U.S., the fast casual restaurant segment has emerged as a group of chains with somewhat higher-quality food, a nicer atmosphere, and higher price points than typical quick service restaurants, but they still have a limited-service format.

While the U.S. foodservice industry has been fairly weak at lunch for the past year, these fast casual chains have posted a 9 percent increase in traffic. This growth partially is due to unit expansion, but even so, consumers have demonstrated interest in visiting fast casual chains at lunch. While fast casual is only 5 percent of QSR lunch traffic, it contributed close to half of QSRs' lunch growth this year.

At typical QSR restaurants in the U.S., burgers and fries are each served at over one-fourth of visits. No food is that dominant at fast casual; Mexican food comes the closest. However, consumers are also using fast casual for soup, turkey sandwiches, Asian food, and main dish salads items not found on the typical QSRs' top 10 list of menu items. These could be worthy considerations for new product development.

Russia, with over 100 million people living in urban centers, a GDP growing at 8 percent per year, and a fast-emerging middle class, represents a ripe opportunity for foodservice operators. Foreign and local chain restaurants in Moscow are growing at the exciting rate of 25 percent per year!

But what do Russians eat away from home? Without much familiarity with a modern Russia, one might expect it's probably traditional, local meals like porridge, soups, or pancakes. But during our pilot study on Russian foodservice, we noted that Russians' top food items consumed away from home are surprisingly close to Americans' top menu choices: burgers, French fries, coffee, and soft drinks. One menu item worth special mention is hot tea, as Russians are great tea-drinkers.

Now, with our recently-released report on the Russian foodservice market, companies can compare Russians' eating patterns to their counterparts' behavior in the U.S. and Western Europe and examine the Russian market in great detail.

In France, consumers are very lunch-oriented, compared to other countries. French people can't miss this part of the day, and it represents more than half of foodservice occasions. Options for lunch in France are quite varied: bakeries, sandwich shops, theme restaurants, and canteens–consumers have a wide range of choices.

Foodservice marketers are using a lot of deals to attract consumers. They are integrating into their menus more meal of the day offers, price promotions, free products, and combo meals. Over the last few months, however, we have seen that more and more people have given up the away-from-home market for lunch, and now they prefer to consume their own prepared meals from home.

Canadians LOVE their coffee. It has the highest incidence of any menu item, included in 31% of all restaurant visits and totaling more than 1.8 billion cups in the past year. By far, Canadians prefer their coffee brewed: only 1 out of every 10 cups is an espresso-based beverage.

And where do they go for that coffee? Most often, to a quick serve Coffee/Donut outlet, where 3 out of 4 times, coffee is ordered 'to go'.

Oh and a 'double double'? That's a coffee with TWO sugars and TWO creams.

Bakeries are the shooting stars of the past few years in Germany. Traditionally providers of bread and cakes, bakeries have found their way into modern away-from-home food consumption behavior. Changing their product portfolio to meet customers' growing need to eat away from home has increased bakeries' market share.

Tasty and diversified products offered on bakery menus help consumers satisfy their hunger at an attractive price. Freshness at all day parts is key to success–bakery owners realized sandwiches that were prepared in the morning do not appeal to customers in the afternoon.

Bakeries have also experienced aggressive outlet expansion. This development was pushed by a process of concentration toward large bakery chains. These chains learned quickly from their strong QSR competitors, and they began to offer in-store consumption, take-away solutions, and a larger variety of beverages. In addition, they understood that customers had come to expect menu combinations when searching for away-from-home meal options.

As the top provider for breakfast consumption, bakeries do not grow in that day part anymore. Other competitors understood there was opportunity in this day part, and they entered the market with special products. Where does bakery growth come from? Lunch and dinner now capture more market share every year. Bakeries offer competitive food solutions that attract price-sensitive consumers-breakfast and dinner are two day parts for bakeries to focus on for future growth.

A unique channel within the U.K. foodservice market is the pub, or public house. Pubs have existed for centuries in this country. Traditionally, they have been places to drink rather than to eat. Over the last 20 years, drinking in pubs has declined due to health concerns, expense, and the enforcement of drink/ drive laws. They have become far more important and recognized as restaurants serving up both traditional English and ethnic cuisine.

The main difference between a pub and a restaurant is that a customer is free to enter a pub and have a drink without being required to eat, but in a restaurant the customer must dine to be able to drink.

Although numbers have been declining, there are still over 100,000 pubs currently trading, and many of those now have a bigger turnover in food sales than alcohol sales. Pubs now account for 6.3 percent of the total away-from-home market in traffic terms, but over 14 percent in value-that's more than double the share of the quick service burger market, and is worth over 6 BN.

The dinner day part is still the most important for pubs, but lunch has been growing. Recently there have been efforts to increase the breakfast daypart, with some of the leading chains opening at 9 a.m. There is still plenty of opportunity to continue the growth of this channel. Some pubs compete with the most up-market restaurants. These have been termed gastro pubs. The average spend per head can be well over 40€ in these establishments.

Aperitif (aperitivo) is the Italian habit of meeting friends before dinner in a coffee bar or pub, drinking and snacking on chips and donuts.

Italians usually enjoy aperitivo between 6 and 8 p.m. Milan, the Italian business city, is the aperitif kingdom. Beginning around 1980, Milan changed the way to serve the aperitif. In fact, the bars of the city center started offering a large buffet with not only snacks, but also pasta, meat, and main dishes in general. The best part for consumers is that they can eat everything for free, only paying for their drinks!

This new way to serve aperitif infected all the city bars in the 1990s, and today this trend is going beyond Milan to the rest of Italy.

This creates a big opportunity for Italian foodservice marketers who can serve many drinks. For the dinner day part, however, it poses a big risk: young people have learned to save money by eating for free in a buffet and then skipping dinner at restaurants.

One of the notable characteristics of the foodservice market in China is pricing. In general, people spend less than a U.S. dollar per person, per purchase. This is due to three factors: they buy from independent vendors that have very low cost structures and pricing; they buy breakfast, which, everywhere, is the lowest priced meal; and for breakfast they eat soy milk and buns-simple, low-priced fare.

The vendors own the low price market segment. Chinese restaurants begin to play an important role in the area between one-and-a-half and two U.S. dollars. The global chains then dominate the (small) part of the market where consumers spend between two and three dollars. After that, restaurants hold the largest share of visits.

Naturally, we expect these price ranges will trend upward as the economy improves. We expect consumers, holding to a strong tradition of seeking value, will look to new venues to serve their needs as their incomes increase over time.

For global chains and suppliers, there is a large short-run challenge to find a way to operate profitably and have an offer that appeals to consumers. Products have to be good, inexpensive, portable (like a bun) and delivered in a quick, convenient way.

Source: The NPD Group/CREST Click here for more information about this report.

The economic downturn is causing a faster market downturn in Spain than in the other European countries. A strong and vital market such as the Spanish one, however, shows some good opportunities for those who are able to find them.

There is a clear impact of the economic situation on the Spanish foodservice industry, which has shown a decline both in sales and traffic in the last year. It has been especially affected by the poor performance of the last half year. Still, new information from NPD's CREST online tracking has detected increasing demand from Spanish consumers. This is concentrated on the adult working population at main cities, and shows that weekday lunch is still a traffic generator for the industry.

This strong market trend is based on new needs shown by the Spanish population. It is especially evident among the adult working population, for whom eating out during weekdays is not discretionary. In this situation, consumers are looking for maximum value perception, and the traditional concept of menu del da (daily combo) is indeed meeting that requirement.

Menu del da is a tradition, and a significant number of independent restaurants provide traditional, homemade-style meal deals. These include a starter, a main course, and a drink, plus an option of coffee or dessert at around 8 to 9 p.m. The effect is that other players within the FSR segment must adapt in order to be part of this growing trend. Top-end a la carta restaurants are also developing formulas for more affordable combo meals, decreasing their prices. Additionally, some QSR players are also trying to provide a full meal offer for their customers, adding the necessary convenience that consumers demand.