Are Restaurant Portions Getting Smaller?

We all know how ridiculous that restaurant portions can be.   And let's be honest, at a lot of places the FOCUS is QUANTITY over quality. We have left restaurants with enough leftover food to feed us for the next two meals. Some times that’s a good thing and lots of people choose restaurants because they know the portions are large.

If you ever watch an episode of Hell’s Kitchen with Chef Gordon Ramsey, you will notice that hates large portions of food leaving the kitchen. He thinks that the restaurant is giving away too much food and should concentrate on food quality not quantity. He is worth almost one half billion dollars, so he knows what he’s talking about.

According to a new report, portion sizes in the U.S. shot up in the 1980s and never came down.  But there's a good chance that will change soon, and there are several reasons why.

For one, restaurants are dealing with rising food costs . . . and there's also food WASTE.  A recent study found that as much as 40% of the food that's served at restaurants never gets eaten.

There are also people taking "GLP-1" diabetes and weight-loss drugs who are eating less . . . and trends where people are using tech to monitor their portion sizes to control their calorie intake.

Finally, there's so-called "snackification," which is gaining popularly among younger people.  That's where traditional meals are replaced with snacks and small platters of food that take the place of meals.

Okay, fine . . . but there's ONE THING that will determine if this will work:  Are people going to get the same value, or is this another SQUEEZE?

According to the 2024 National Restaurant Association report, more than 75% of customers say they want smaller portions . . . FOR LESS MONEY.

If you're going to shrink the portion sizes and try to get away with serving LESS of the SAME food . . . then there will be backlash.

(DNYUZ)