hospitalitytoday.com | 23
Stress and work drive customers’
unhealthy eating habits
Seasonal differences in eating habits are
often ascribed to crash dieting before
holidays, but a new analysis of restaurant
customer data shows that other factors
like jobs and stress now play just as
large a role.
The day to day data, analysed from over
20,000 food orders by customer insight
specialist Ordoo, show that people’s
behaviours shift dramatically from the
weekday to the weekend, and that there
is a relationship between people’s busy
work lives and their ability to resist the
temptation of unhealthy food.
The data showed that:
People are 23% more likely to eat
healthily in Summer than in Winter.
People are twice as likely to eat
unhealthily on Monday as they are on
the weekend (Saturday and Sunday).
Thursday is the least healthy day,
with almost one in three (29%)
of orders being unhealthy.
Coffee orders spike on Monday
afternoons to levels more twice as high
as any other afternoon of the week.
Ordoo’s data show that people are twice
as likely to make unhealthy choices
during the week than they are at the
weekend, suggesting that job pressures
and work/life balances contribute to eating
unhealthy food. This view is supported
by the fact that consumers are most likely
to order unhealthy options on Wednesday
and Thursday, the days furthest from
the weekend.
Similarly, the data show that people are
using large amounts of coffee to help
them get through the stress of Monday
afternoon, when there are more than
double the usual volume of afternoon
coffee orders.
People are 23% more likely to order healthy
food in summer than in spring. With
people more relaxed during the holiday
season they have time to think about their
diet, and reach for the healthy option. The
findings show this is as likely a reason for
eating good food as the idea that people
are ‘crash dieting’ before holidays.