I only had to walk eight minutes, just eight minutes to get back to my hotel in Las Vegas last week during what feels like a never-ending heat emergency. I’d planned to walk further than just a few blocks before I would settle on a nice sit-down restaurant for dinner. However, all of my plans were thwarted by the hottest temperature I’ve ever experienced.
The heat drove every decision I made for the next 48-hours, including the bad one to play “just one more” round of video craps so I could get more A/C time. When I got back to my hotel after eight minutes in the blast furnace, I was exhausted, and a little disturbed by my lack of sweating, so I picked the first restaurant–a fast-casual chain–I came across. It only took eight minutes outside to destroy my commitment to dinner and, by that point, the only criteria I had were that there was no wait, I didn’t have to order through a server and the beverages were unlimited and self-serve.
I was in Las Vegas to present Technomic consumer insights, including key drivers for restaurant visits. Craveability is still by far the top need-state driving visits to restaurants. However, before I took the stage, I wondered if the extreme weather would start to win out over craveability when it comes to deciding where and what to eat. How will climate change directly impact the individual consumer decisions? And how should operators prepare?
Technomic surveyed foodservice operators about the impact of extreme weather, and 55% said they were affected by extreme weather events in 2022, which is likely to increase given what we’ve experienced so far in 2023.
While we often think about climate change wreaking havoc on crops and impacting prices and sourcing, less attention has been paid on the impact on individual customer decisions to dine at (or get takeout from) a restaurant and to the effect on employees. Operators are noticing though, with low traffic and staffing issues being the most commonly cited impact of extreme weather events.
While restaurant sales and traffic have been historically correlated with weather, we can expect more extreme variances in the future making it ostensibly more difficult for operators to plan menus and staffing. However, operators now have the ability to leverage technology to look at data to understand how weather is impacting sales and traffic, what consumers are ordering, and whether it’s for dine-in or off-premise, which will help to direct efforts to what can most drive sales. Further, operators should consider how climate change will be factoring into their costs beyond ingredients such as investing in more efficient air conditioning/heating, renewable energy solutions, green roofs, insulation, misters or just some stronger patio umbrellas.
Going back to craveability vs. weather, I believe that while the gap may shrink when it comes to visit drivers, ultimately craveability will win especially for non-routine occasions. I spoke with Travis Fox, transportation executive, who was visiting Washington, D.C. while it was under a Hot Weather Emergency, to ask if the weather had any impact on his dining choices. “Outdoor dining is out of the question,” Mr. Fox said, “but I’m not compromising too much on my cravings. I’ll have something lighter like seafood for dinner. But, I have to confess, I had goulash for lunch.”
Here in Chicago, we’re under both a heat advisory and an air quality alert (ozone this time, not wildfire induced). Despite this, I still ate my lunch on the restaurant patio. Considering my Las Vegas experience, why would I do that? To thaw out from the extreme air conditioning in the office.
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