Corporate travelers are spending more on business meals

Spending on business meals has increased in the past year, with fine dining showing the greatest demand.

Figures show 11% of corporate travelers had at least one business meal a week during October, compared to 9% a year ago.

The average number of business-related meals per week was 3.0 in October 2013, a slight decline compared to 3.3 in October 2012.
 
However, the larger number of people ordering business meals more than offsets the lower average number of meals per person, so the total number of business-related meals is up slightly over this period.

Spending per business meal rose substantially over the same period, with average total spending on business meals at $55 per week in October 2013, compared with $45 in October 2012.

This translates to an average check per business meal of about $18.50 in October 2013 compared with $13.50 last year.

A substantial portion of this improvement in check size was driven by a higher degree of trade-up to fine dining among business-meal customers. 

In October 2013, 42% of business-meal customers visited a fine-dining restaurant once a week or more compared with just 34% in October 2012. 

Over the same time the number of business-meal customers who visit casual-dining restaurants once a week or more also increased, rising from 48% last year to 53% this year, but not as big an increase as seen for the fine-dining segment.

Restaurant customers with business-meals are far more likely to visit fine-dining restaurants once per week (42%) than customers with no business meals (5%). 

Restaurant customers with business-meals are also much more likely to visit casual-dining restaurants once per week or more (53%) than customers with no business meals (20%).

This means the average weekly spending on restaurants of customers with business meals is about $122, compared to just $41 for those with no business meals.

"A higher-spending business meal customer is a very welcome development for the high-end but also the middle tier of the restaurant industry" said David Decker, president of Consumer Edge Insight, which carried out the research.

"For fine-dining restaurants, one of their core customer segments is starting to visit restaurants more often and is more likely to be trading up to fine-dining than a year ago. 

"While this is a smaller customer segment for most casual-dining restaurants in terms of traffic, the higher average spending among this group makes them an important segment to understand and target as much as possible given your brand."

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