Food Compensation: When Consumers Play Yo-Yo with Their Plates

You know that moment when you say to yourself, "After this mega triple cheeseburger, I’m only eating salad for three days" ? Welcome to the era of food compensation, that little balancing game in which we are all more or less champions !

Compensation: Not Just a Legal Term

In law, compensation is a form of reparation for a harm suffered.

On our plates ? It’s exactly the same thing! Except here, it’s our conscience (and sometimes our body) demanding justice. It’s a bit like our stomach filing a complaint against our excesses…

Generation Z: Kings and Queens of Extreme Compensation

Ah, Gen Z ! These experts in “all or nothing” who can alternate between a feast worthy of Pantagruel and a monastic fast. One day it’s a tower burger with extra sauce, the next day it’s a “detox” with three lettuce leaves.

This generation has elevated compensation to an art form, oscillating between assumed excesses and calculated restrictions.

The Daily Puzzle of "Where and What to Eat?"

Did you know that 75% of working people don’t know where they will have lunch before 11 a.m.?

It’s the great mystery of the lunch break!

And this is where compensation comes into play :

• "I ate Asian food yesterday, today I’m going back to traditional."

• "After three days of chicken, no more poultry in sight!"

• "Yesterday’s healthy meal gives me the moral right to indulge in a pizza today."

  
  

So we make these choices by compensating...

Market Consequences: Between Guilty Pleasure and Food Anxiety

In the current context, compensation takes on a new dimension. It’s no longer just a matter of guilty pleasure, you know, that American pastry giving you the eye.

It has become a sort of “food Lexomil,” an outlet to cope with ambient anxiety.

The Restaurateurs’ Challenge: Juggling to Satisfy Every Profile

For restaurant professionals, it’s a constant balancing act :

• Offering premium AND accessible options

• Providing healthy AND comforting dishes

• Keeping classics AND innovating

  
  

The Solution? Multiplicity of Offers

Traditional restaurants have understood this well: you have to mix genres. A little ethnic here, a traditional dish there… It’s the new mantra to survive in this ever-evolving market.

Beware: The Functionalization of Food

The biggest risk ? That eating becomes a purely functional act. “I eat because I have to eat.” Stop ! Dining deserves better than that.

It must remain a source of pleasure, exchange, and discovery.

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In Conclusion: Towards a New Approach to Dining

The challenge for restaurateurs is to transform this trend into an opportunity by offering varied options that allow everyone to find their balance, whether in “wise mode” or “letting go.”

The important thing is to maintain what makes the very essence of dining: the pleasure of eating, discovering, and sharing. Because after all, if compensation has become our new normal, we might as well make it a positive experience!

We will measure this compensation and the reasons behind it at the next Snack Show on April 2nd and 3rd. Come in large numbers. At worst, you’ll compensate for your visit to the fair with an extra day of work...