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Restaurant operators who are growing tired of catering to Millennials can rejoice: There&#8217;s a new, perhaps more important, generation taking a seat at the table: Generation Z. Born after 1995 &#8212; just kids and teens right now &#8212; Gen Z are the biggest population swell since the Baby Boomers, and officials at market-research firm The NPD Group say Zs are already making a big impact on the restaurant industry. &#8220;Gen Z are very important and only going to get bigger,&#8221; said NPD analyst Bonnie Riggs. &#8220;Now is the time to start building loyalty with them. They&#8217;re going to drive your business in the years to come.&#8221; In the year ended February 2016, Gen Z accounted for $78 billion spent at restaurants, according to NPD. Additionally, the group makes up the second-largest share of restaurant visits &#8212; Boomers are the largest. Although still very young, Zs are a group that is digitally and socially connected. A recent report from Sparks &amp; Honey, a culturally focused ad agency, shows Zs have the ability to multitask across more screens then Millennials, including TV, cell phones, laptops, desktop computers and iPods/portable music players. They also use YouTube and other social media sites to conduct research for school assignments. &#8220;[Operators] have to be on the leading edge with older Gen Zs,&#8221; Riggs said. This group is also self-reliant, entrepreneurial and socially conscious, with 26 percent of teens ages 16 to 19 volunteering in 2013, according to Sparks &amp; Honey&#8217;s Gen Z report. Like Millennials and Gen X, Zs make the majority of their restaurant visits at quick-service chains, although older Zs &#8212; those between the ages of 11 and 19 &#8212; tend to visit fast-casual chains more, NPD found. In the year ended February 2016, 7 percent of the per capita visits made by older Gen Zs were to fast-casual chains, compared with 6 percent of per capita visits for Millennials and 5 percent for Gen X. When visiting restaurants, these kids and teens tend to go out as a group and share their food. According to NPD, their average party size is 2.4, and they have a higher percentage of shared meals than any other generation. Gen Zs are also eating better than Millennials were at their age. NPD&#8217;s new Generational Study: The Evolution of Eating Report, indicates a shift among Gen Z toward more healthful food choices and snack foods, while maintaining perennial favorites. For example, while hamburgers are among the top three foods Gen Zs eat at quick-service restaurants, they eat them less than Millennials, favoring chicken and pizza instead, NPD found. <a href="http://nrn.com/consumer-trends/move-over-millennials-gen-z-takes-seat-table-0?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=move-over-millennials-restaurant-operators-are-finding-ways-to-cater-to-generation-z-5129" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Click here to read the original article.</a>

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Generation Z are the biggest population swell since the Baby Boomers, and experts say they’re already making a big impact on the restaurant industry. 


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