They want to live forever

They were counting us out. They figured it was the millennials who
were going to come in and save their bacon. But at the end of the day
who's filling up the booths at T.G.I. Fridays? Who's getting the
Lumberjack Slam breakfast at Denny's? Who's dialing up for pizza
because, really, who feels like cooking tonight?

Baby boomers, that's who.

A recent study by a market research company, the NPD Group, found that
over the last five years, restaurant visits by boomers and older
Americans have grown steadily, while those by millennials (basically
people under 30) have declined.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Bonnie Riggs, NPD's restaurant industry analyst, said the assumption
had been that baby boomers would follow traditional patterns and spend
less on dining out as they got older. "So even though there are a lot
of them," she said, "they were not going to provide the support to the
industry that they had when they were younger. Well, lo and behold,
that turned out not to be true."

We'll get to why that might be in a moment, but first a word of
reassurance for our millennial friends: we are not trying to pick a
fight. We know it has been a tough week for you. Just the other day,
the folks at the Institute of Politics at Harvard put out a report
describing you as disillusioned with major institutions and turned off
by politicians. If you feel like just staying home and eating ramen,
we understand.

But we're heading out! Cause that's what we boomers do.

In fact, that might help explain why older Americans now are hitting
restaurants at an age when many people before them were slowing down.
"The baby boomers, not surprisingly, are America's most-experienced
restaurant generation," said Hudson Riehle, a senior vice president at
the National Restaurant Association. (They also helped fuel the
take-out food market, so the next time you see a pizza truck bearing
down on you, thank a boomer.)

Simple economics also plays a role. Many boomers are retiring later
than people did in generations before them, giving them more
disposable income. And they are also likely to be earning more than
younger people, many of whom have been especially hard hit by the
economic downturn.

But some if it comes down to attitude. "The boomers happen to be very
different than their predecessors," Ms. Riggs said. "They act younger.
They eat younger. They want to live forever."

That seems unlikely to happen. In fact, restaurant owners who want to
keep boomers' business will have to think about things like readable
menus for aging eyes and reduced ambient noise for aging ears, experts
say. They will also need to make sure the furniture is comfortable.
And a restaurant association study suggests that they may need to
tread carefully when it comes to restaurant features that appeal to
younger people, like electronic ordering systems at tables.

The NPD study found that boomers and older people have increased their
share of restaurant traffic by six percentage points, while
Millennials have decreased their share by the same amount. This
suggests, the group said, that restaurants that had been aiming their
marketing at the younger audience need to rethink their approach.

One of the ways NPD measures consumer behavior is with a longstanding
survey involving 3,000 people at a time. "We go out every day and ask
them what they did yesterday," Ms. Riggs said.

This, of course, may pose a problem for many boomers:

Who remembers?

nyt