As KAM launches our 2024 Family Dining report, Jo Lynch, Account Director at KAM, explores why venues need to refresh their offer to really deliver to customers when dining with kids.
“As a former operator within a family-friendly Italian brand, we used to put a lot of time and effort into our kids menus.
And this shouldn’t have changed for operators, even now 8 years on from completely re-developing the kids offer to include different size options (and pricing), healthier options, kids’ packs and first food fast – making sure kids starters went out quickly to keep them occupied.
Our Family Dining report in 2022 was one of our most downloaded reports in the last 3 years, and so the decision to re-run it this year, supported by our friends at HGEM, was an easy one to make.
Although I’m now past the age of worrying what my 23 and 20 year old eat, I remember the days of wanting a booth to ‘trap’ them into, taking toy cars to brmmm up and down the table, and colouring in and doing word searches with a smile – so what’s changed in terms of what parents want for their children when eating out – whether at a pub, restaurant, coffee shop or QSR venue?
There are 8.2m+ families in the UK (adults living with one or more dependent children, source: ONS), which equates to nearly 600m family dining occasions, per year, across the whole of the dining out sector. Just thing of the size of the prize if you can persuade families to choose your venue or brand over another, when each visit is worth an average of £55 per family?
The family dining report serves to place a focus on family dining and uncovering the consumer behaviours and attitudes that influence how families decide where and when to spend their time and money. With feedback from 1,000 parents of children, this research highlights the needs, wants, stress points and opportunities for this valuable dining and leisure occasion, and how these have changed over the last 24 months, in order to help operators and brands attract, engage and build loyalty with these valuable consumers.
Family Dining – Key Take-outs
Firstly, our research showed that 91% of families eat out together at least once every 3 months, with families of primary-schoolers spending around £4,567 a year on eating out of home. In this age group too, the most important consideration on choice of food is ‘food I know they will eat’ with 1 in 2 parents saying this was their main factor in choosing where to go. In fact – this stat was the top one in all age groups, so making sure there are child-friendly dishes on the menu is a top consideration for operators. Just over 48% of parents said this was their top factor, up 10% from 2022.
However, we also see that 49% of parents think that kids menus are generally uninspiring. They want to see a variety of choices (86%), affordable prices (85%), and appropriate portion sizes (82%) – these were the top 3 factors on what parents want to see on menus. Healthy options came in at 72%, so still significant – but sustainability / local sourcing was least important (47%).
Certainly when my two were younger, when eating out I wasn’t so worried about the health implications – that was my responsibility as a parent, and more for at home. If I was paying good money for a meal out, I wanted to be sure they’d eat it – so would always choose somewhere I knew there’d be something they would eat. That said my son even from a young age would choose weird-food-for-kids like moules-frites or steak. My daughter would prefer a plain margherita pizza with extra olives.
This was similar for our parents in this research – 50% said they are less likely to worry about their children eating healthily when eating out.
What about the biggest frustration for parents when eating out? Probably unsurprisingly – it is long wait times. There’s nothing worse than dealing with a hangry child of any age (or a hangry parent for that matter!) – and our research showed 41% of parents had experienced slow service when eating out in the last 12 months.
This is only a very small snippet of what the full report can tell you – but ultimately we really must listen to what the family diner wants, what they expect and what would help to create that magical experience.”
The full report can be downloaded here.
If you’re interested to access more of our hospitality research in general then take a look at our Knowledge Hub (lots of free insight!)
