Restaurants

Are we seeing the end of fast-food specialization and the re-emergence of restaurants with menus offering a wide variety of foods?

There used to be burger joints and chicken joints, pizza and ice cream parlors, coffee shops … more niches and chains than almost anyone could name. Then came the great 21st century recession: boundaries blurred as quick-servers attempted to get every last dining-out consumer dollar.

Virtually every member of the restaurant Power Player group has been extending its menu offerings of late. McDonald’s, one of the few chains performing well in this economy, is rolling out McCafes, ready to take on the Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts of the world. Yum! Brands’ KFC, the erstwhile Kentucky Fried Chicken, is serving up a grilled option; and Domino’s now delivers sandwiches and pasta in bowls fashioned out of bread boules.

With all this overlap occurring against the backdrop of a prolonged economic slump, can contraction and consolidation be far behind? The situation would be similar to what has occurred in other retail segments over the last 15 years or so. After all, it wasn’t so very long ago that the landscape was populated with dozens of home center stores and more than 75 different department store chains.