Dining dayparts, once crisply defined, have gotten fuzzy. Breakfast spots that saw a reliable pre-9 a.m. rush now have traffic trickle in all morning. Cafés have remote workers lingering at tables, lunching as they work on their laptops. The dinner rush has expanded into the afternoon, as customer pick up meals while they’re out and about.
“The key to the industry’s recovery will be the strength of each daypart,” The NPD Group reports. Each daypart, from breakfast to evening snack, will be shaped by “new rhythms of home, school, and work-life.”
As consumers’ new work-from-home/hybrid schedules alter when — and how — they eat, how can restaurants adapt? Let’s take a closer look at each daypart.
