Recent changes in the restaurant consumer market have prompted a spur in growth of revenues for independent restaurants. The millennial market, for example, favors local and small-scale businesses. Other influences like lifestyle entertainment such as television shows highlighting unique eating experiences are also prompting the shift away from chain restaurants. Social media is also a major factor in these recent shifts. With such trends many independent restaurants are striving to maintain and improve quality to continually delivery products and services above that of their chain restaurant competitors.

Key Takeaways:

• Traffic at restaurant chains has been increasingly problematic in recent years, and has fallen at least 4.2 percent on a two-year basis in four of the past five months, according to MillerPulse.
• One reason for the decline is that consumers are broadening their spending, especially at dine-in concepts where prices are higher.
• To be sure, it’s difficult to truly get a handle on shifts in the independent market, and there’s some disagreement among experts as to whether independents are really gaining market share.

“This cannot be emphasized enough. Large chains can tout their local ingredients all they want, but they will have only so much credibility with consumers. Independents have no such problem.”

Read more: http://www.restaurant-hospitality.com/consumer-trends/5-reasons-independent-restaurants-are-winning