Restaurants, which have been slumping for two years because of a slew of short-term factors, are waking up to a worrisome long-term trend: The number of harried working moms isn't growing the way it was.
For decades, the steady increase of working women was a boon to restaurants. The combination of women having less time to cook and households having a second income led families to eat at restaurants more frequently. From 1948 to 1999, the percentage of women in the work force climbed from 32.7% to 60%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Since 1999, though, that five-decade increase has leveled off, with the percentage of women in the work force down slightly at 59.2% as of January. The result is less money in the family budget.
The number of restaurant visits that Americans make annually has flattened out, and consumers have increased the number of meals they make at home. Last year, 207 restaurant meals were purchased per person, down from a peak of 211 in 2001, according to NPD. Meanwhile, Americans prepared 861 meals at home in 2007, compared with 817 in 2002, NPD says.
