Gen-Z Skirts The Traditional Meal Mold

Late-night eating is becoming a defining habit for Gen-Z, who indulge at more than three times the rate of Boomers and are skipping traditional meals at a higher rate than their older counterparts.

According to Datassential’s latest Demographic Dive report, 84% of Gen-Z consumers said they’d eaten a late-night meal at least once in the past month, compared with just 25% of Boomers.

Eighty-eight percent of Gen-Z respondents also said they skipped a traditional meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) altogether, compared with 55% for Boomers, and the divide between those snacking in place of a regular meal stood at 86% versus 56%, respectively.

Millennials showed similar, if slightly less pronounced, patterns across those measures, while Gen X fell roughly in the middle of the generational spread.

The appetite for eating outside a fixed schedule also appeared in where Gen-Z eats.

Twenty-eight percent of Gen-Z’s typical meals are consumed away from home, compared with 16% for Boomers. In a separate Datassential survey fielded in March, 74% of Gen-Z consumers said they got restaurant food at least once a week and 63% got takeout or delivery, compared with 52% and 29% of Boomers, respectively.

Some operators are already recalibrating around those preferences, with 21% of those that have late-night menus saying they increased the number of items in that daypart over the past year, according to Datassential’s Menu Innovation vs. Simplification report. The same percentage of those that offer afternoon snack menus said they increased the number of those offerings.

Meanwhile, the report showed that snackable menu categories like desserts and appetizers/small plates were among the menuparts operators have grown the most. Some 39% of operators who offer appetizers/small plates said they increased the number of items in that category, with desserts showing an identical percentage.

All-day menu items also have grown, up 9% year over year, per Datassential’s most recent State of the Menu report.