The problems that defined the previous year, including high inflation and labor shortages, were countered by restaurants using technology to work smarter, drive revenue, and connect with diners.
BentoBox was there the whole way, helping restaurants succeed in their mission of hospitality. Based on data sourced from thousands of restaurants using the BentoBox Marketing & Commerce Platform, join us in exploring the seven trends that defined the restaurant industry in 2023.
Restaurant spending and openings grew
Spending growth continued.
On the revenue front, 2023 was a steady year for restaurants. After big increases in 2022, growth in restaurant spending, transactions, and average ticket price all tapered off, with restaurant spending growth settling in around 5% — still higher than inflation — for most of the year.
Restaurant spending grew in every part of the country.
Diners tipped more (often)
Tip creep is real, and it is driven by younger diners.
Yes, you are being asked to tip more often these days. Young diners are happier to oblige than older ones.
Percentage of Diners Who Agree:
Tipping’s generation gap
Older diners are less likely to reconsider the services for which they tip.
Diners may not like tipping, but they like the control it gives them.
Three-quarters of diners say they would prefer to replace tipping with higher base pay, but strong majorities of diners believe tipping drives better service and flexibility. That, they do like.
People who have worked for tips tend to like tipping.
The 44% of surveyed diners who had worked for tips in the past actually had more pro-tipping sentiment than their counterparts.
Workers took center stage
Employee well-being became part of restaurant culture.
Growth of specific terms on restaurant websites, ‘22–23
“paid time off”
“paid vacation”
“health care”
“mental health”
Reservations were made on the fly
Party size mattered.
Walk-in parties were twice as common as reservations. But when you factor in the higher party size of reservations, the planned-ahead crowd actually came to represent almost 30% of total covers.
Plans were made last-minute.
Perhaps owing to the fact that nearly half of reservations were parties of 2, diners tended to book reservations less than a day ahead of time.
Cancellations were rare.
Nine in ten reservations showed up and were seated; less than 7% cancelled and only 2% failed to show at all.
Ecommerce got personal
Gift cards were unwrapped with A.I.
Diners used BentoBox to send more than 62,000 restaurant gift cards this year. As 2023 was also the first year A.I. went mainstream, we asked ChatGPT to categorize the senders’ notes, for the first time letting us see what people have been saying to their friends, family, and colleagues.
What Gift Card notes said
Sender-Recipient Relationship
