What a carve-up: Sunday roast dinner, delivered to your door
Restaurant chains offer app meal delivery services for millennials who are missing home comforts
IT IS the closest thing the British kitchen has to a religion, but the traditional Sunday roast may be migrating away from its spiritual home – the family dinner table – as millennials turn to takeaway services for their weekly fix of meat, veg and gravy.
The Toby Carvery restaurant chain, the self-proclaimed “home of the Great British roast dinner”, has seen a surge in sales since offering takeaways earlier this year.
A midweek carvery costs £7.79 and includes meat such as beef or pork with apple and sage, gravy, Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes. The meals are thought to have proved particularly popular with millennials who do not want to cook or eat out, but still seek the comfort of a traditional meal.
It comes as chain restaurants face increasing pressure to offer their dishes on delivery apps as the high street exodus of businesses continues.
Toby Carvery deliveries are handled by online takeaway company Just Eat, whose rival Deliveroo also offers meals to your door from premium pubs such as Miller & Carter.
Paul Davies, from the market research firm Mintel, said young people wanting a taste of home were leading the drive in sales of the roast dinners.
“Traditionally, the typical roast dinner consumer would probably be an older demographic or families, rather than young singles, but with it offered as delivery, that could change as the core users of delivery apps tend to be younger, situated in more urban areas,” he said.
Young families have driven Toby Carvery’s sales surge, with around a third of parents with children under five visiting a branch in the last year.
Oisin Rogers, whose west London restaurant The Guinea Grill specialises in roasts on Sundays, has seen a similar boost, as sales of the traditional meal grew 35 per cent year-on-year.
He said Sundays brought “a lot” more young people through his doors, adding: “People don’t have the time, they want to be able to chill out and relax on a Sunday because they work so hard and commute for so long. I think to do a Sunday roast at home is one of the easiest things to do – but to do it really well is an absolute nightmare.
“You’ve got to have ovens on different temperatures to do your Yorkshire puddings, your potatoes, your beef. You’ve got to know your timings for your vegetables, you’re relying on people arriving at the right time – all that sort of thing.”
Mr Davies claimed the takeaway sector was now “propping up” the eating-out sector: “There has been a decline in some casual dining chains that have been slow to adapt and have large, high street premises with high rent that don’t offer delivery,” he said. Phil Urban, boss of Mitchells & Butlers, Toby Carvery’s parent firm, said: “The delivery market is growing and growing. It’s something that’s here to stay.”