Spanish Speaking Latinos use Restaurants Differently than Others

Who knew?

It’s one of those things that you realize once someone points it out to you. If you’re Latino and predominantly Spanish speaking you  use restaurants differently than non-Spanish predominant Latinos, and everyone else.

The revelation was made by NPD, a market research company, and published in PQM, “The Pizza Industry’s Business Resource” – what? you thought the pizza pie industry didn’t have a publication of its own?

According to PQM:

…(Latinos) are an increasingly important customer base for the foodservice industry in light of the some 9.8 billion restaurant visits they make each year…

One of my favorite things has been to be greeted in Spanish when I walked into a Starbucks in Laredo, Texas (if you think about it, that statement says a lot about me). With 9.8 billion restaurant visits a year, you’d better believe that the pizza industry and all other restaurants would want to know how Latinos use their services.

But the use itself says  plenty about Spanish-predominant Latinos.

• They are more likely to visit restaurants for morning meals and snacks (read here: Tacos and Gansitos) – 31 percent of the visits occur at the morning meal and 22 percent occur at the afternoon or evening for a snack, compared to everyone else among whom 18 percent of visits occur at the morning meal and 15 percent occur at the afternoon or evening.
• Latinos are more likely to have children with them than non-Hispanics (OK, this isn’t a earth-shattering information, but it goes to the point and some clueless folks out in the restaurant-going universe may not have noticed). The study found that “more than half of restaurant visits from Spanish-dominant Hispanics and a third of visits from English-speaking Hispanics include parties with children. In contrast, just 29 percent of visits by non-Hispanics include parties with children.”

Conclusions? That Latinos are hard working people who grab a bite early in the morning on their way to work and that because we’re a young community we have lots of kids (not to be confused with large families, that stereotype doesn’t jibe with reality any more).

During the summer when I was a kid I’d help my Dad do his milk route, he was a milkman (yes, soy hijo del lechero…). We’d get up at the crack of dawn and stop at a restaurant called Las Cazuelas, on Market street in Laredo (I think the place is still there). I remember all of the men at the place were route-workers: mailmen, bread and beer delivery guys, milkmen. It was a really cool brotherhood of working-class men who swapped wonderful stories over their tacos and coffee.

I’m positive that morning gatherings like those are still going on in places across the country, and while it may not be useful to the neighborhood pizza place, the fact that Latinos take their kids with them to restaurants is very much so.

So if people want proof that Latinos are hard-working and family oriented, tell them about the pizza magazine study.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda

[Phot by _Fidelio_]