The diner near my house used to be full of my friends at seven in the morning.
Now most of them make their coffee at home and come in once a week for the eggs. The waitress noticed before we did.
It turns out the whole cohort is doing it. Our food money is drifting from the restaurant to the kitchen counter, a little more every year.
That is your read for this afternoon. The grocery receipt on your counter is where a big piece of this generation’s spending now lands.
The federal spending survey shows the drift in plain dollars. Households headed by someone 45 to 54 spent $5,069 on restaurants and takeout in 2024.
Households headed by someone 75 or older spent $2,472.
Set those two figures one above the other and the slope is hard to miss.
$5,069
spent on food away from home by households headed by someone 45 to 54, in 2024
$2,472
spent by households headed by someone 75 or older
About half the restaurant budget is gone by 75. Two-thirds of what remains in the food budget now gets spent at the grocery store.
That second number is the one that matters. For households 65 and older, 66 cents of every food dollar went to groceries in 2024.
For all households it was 61 cents. Five cents sounds small. Across this many kitchens it is a very large aisle.
The shift starts early in retirement. Households headed by someone 65 to 74 spent $5,642 on groceries and $2,841 eating out. The young-old are already cooking.
So the second-order effect lands on the shelf. The restaurant loses a customer. The grocery aisle gains one for twenty years.
Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and where the food dollar goes in each aisle.
The limit is that some of this drop is simple arithmetic. Older households are smaller, so they buy less food of every kind.
Incomes fall in retirement too. And grocery margins are thin, so a bigger aisle does not mean an easier business for whoever stocks it.
The arithmetic
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Surveys, 2024 annual data by age of reference person, via FRED: food away from home $5,069 (ages 45 to 54) and $2,472 (75 and older); food at home $7,703 (45 to 54) and $4,696 (75 and older); households 65 and older food at home $5,251 and food away $2,689; all households food at home $6,224 and food away $3,945; ages 65 to 74 food at home $5,642 and food away $2,841. Shares of the food budget spent at home, Boomers Trade’s own arithmetic: 65 and older 5,251 / (5,251 + 2,689) = 66%; all households 6,224 / (6,224 + 3,945) = 61%. The drop in restaurant spending from 45 to 54 to 75 and older, 2,472 / 5,069 = 0.49, is about half. The diner, the waitress, and the twenty-year customer are illustrations.
Next time you push a cart down the coffee aisle, look at the shelf at eye level. Somebody paid for that spot, because they know who is walking past it. This time, it is us.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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