Who Eats out Where joins Who Drinks What and Who Eats What as one of three new marketing handbooks from Euromonitor International, the specialists in market analyses, consumer spending and statistical profiles. This book provides a wealth of up to date statistical information on patterns of eating out in 52 countries from Argentina to Vietnam. It aims to provide insight into the state of the consumer food service market of each nation and includes detailed information on relevant socio‐economic parameters; the number of consumer food service outlets; the total value of consumer food service sale; sectoral analysis covering cafes, bars, restaurants, fast food outlets, home delivery, take‐away, self‐service cafeterias, street stalls and kiosks; the breakdown of chained and independent suppliers; and selected data on each of the types of service covered. The years 2001‐2007 are featured.
The book consists of 406 densely‐packed, although clearly presented, A4 pages of tabulated statistics. The data are presented in both volume (e.g. number of outlets) and value (e.g. US dollars) terms to facilitate comparison and the easier identification of trends and development. There are four main sections. The first, “Socio‐economic parameters”, provides background to the consumer food service data by presenting information relating to a nation's ability to allocate disposable income to eating out. This includes population, GDP, inflation and exchange rates, employment, consumer expenditure, and household characteristics. We learn, for example, that annual rates of inflation for 2007 range from 0.1 per cent in Japan to 18.7 per cent in Venezuela, and that the percentage of the population over 65 has risen 3.2 per cent in Germany compared with only 0.3 per cent in France.
In the second section, “World consumer foodservice trends”, data are presented in comparable units within 62 statistical tables grouped under seven consumer food service topics. This facilitates easy cross‐country comparisons of trends. For example, the total number of full‐service restaurants in China doubled (from 1.7 million to 3.6 million), whereas in Portugal the number fell by 7.7 per cent. In Singapore, the per capita sales in street stalls and kiosks increased by a massive 635.9m US$ whereas in Turkey it was only 0.6.
Section three is “World consumer foodservice ranking”, where the relative positions of each of the 52 countries are ranked according to 47 food service parameters. Here we find confirmation of the British love of fish and chips as the UK is top ranked for fish fast food as a percentage of total fast food. Spain is top ranked for the value of cafe/bar food service sales.
The final section is by far the largest covering almost 300 pages and featuring 1,260 tables. Country Snapshots presents socio‐economic and consumer food service data for each country. In Norway, the numbers of street stalls and kiosks has dropped 4.5 per cent, but home delivery and takeaways are up 35.9 per cent. In the USA, sales in specialised coffee shops have doubled over the last seven years.
There is a massive 21‐page Table of Contents filled with miniscule type listing every one of 1,371 tables! Fortunately this is preceded by a more user‐friendly two‐page Summary of Contents. The publishers stress that the data come from a variety of sources, both published and researched, but apart from the general first section, where sources noted include the International Labour Organisation, National Statistics, International Monetary Fund and OECD, invariably the source quoted tends to be the anodyne “trade sources”.
Business librarians, whether in college, university, commercial or state/national libraries, will doubtless be familiar with Euromonitor publications and their densely packed tabulations, thorough research and high price. Such quality and quantity of data does not, alas, come cheap. Regular users will also know that the publishers offer other services such as data tailored to user profiles.
