Lunch remains one of the most frequently purchased meals away from home in the United States. In 2018, 52.8% of consumer units reported buying lunch away from home in a typical week, compared with 50.2% reporting dinner. The same Bureau of Labor Statistics research found average weekly lunch spending of $18.00 across all respondents and $34.00 among people who bought lunch away from home.
This guide brings together lunch-specific measures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), broader restaurant-spending figures from the USDA Economic Research Service (USDA ERS), and historical price measures for meals eaten away from home. The years and geographies are kept explicit because the measures cover different periods and are not interchangeable.
Contents
- How often Americans bought lunch away from home
- What people spent on lunch
- Which restaurant formats captured lunch occasions
- Full-service restaurant lunch patterns by age
- Household, income, and work patterns in 1997
- Lunch in the wider food-away-from-home market
- Historical prices for restaurant and school meals
How often Americans bought lunch away from home
The BLS report “Meal Appeal: Patterns of Expenditures on Food away from Home” measured consumer-unit behavior in 2018. Its headline lunch measure was 52.8%: that was the share reporting at least one lunch purchased away from home in a typical week. Lunch was reported slightly more often than dinner, at 50.2%.
The 2018 result is a participation measure, not a count of restaurant visits. It indicates whether a consumer unit reported the meal during the reference week. It also includes more than traditional restaurants, because the BLS categories cover fast food, take-out, delivery, concession stands, buffets, cafeterias, full-service restaurants, employer and school cafeterias, vending machines, and mobile vendors.
An earlier BLS report, “Let’s do lunch: expenditures on meals away from home,” used 1997 data and found that 60.7% of families reported lunch away from home each week. Lunch was the most frequently reported meal away from home for every age group in that 1997 analysis. The two figures should be read as period-specific findings rather than as a continuous trend: the 1997 measure concerns families, while the 2018 measure concerns consumer units, and the reports use different study designs.
What people spent on lunch
In 2018, average weekly spending on lunch away from home was $18.00 across all BLS respondents. Among respondents who bought lunch away from home, the average was $34.00 per week. The difference matters: an all-respondent average includes people who did not report buying lunch, while the purchaser average describes spending among the participating group.
Lunch spending was higher than the corresponding $6.00 weekly figure for breakfast and brunch. It also exceeded the $5.00 average for snacks and nonalcoholic beverages. These figures are weekly averages from the BLS 2018 analysis and should not be treated as the price of one meal or as a current menu benchmark.
The older BLS study reported average weekly lunch spending of $9.65 per family in 1997. That amount was higher than the $2.22 weekly average for breakfast and brunch but lower than the $14.24 weekly average for dinner. Because the 1997 and 2018 reports use different years and population terminology, their dollar figures are best used to describe each period separately rather than combined into an inflation-adjusted comparison.
| Measure | Period | Reported amount or share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lunch bought away from home in a typical week | 2018 | 52.8% of consumer units | BLS, “Meal Appeal” |
| Average weekly lunch spending, all respondents | 2018 | $18.00 | BLS, “Meal Appeal” |
| Average weekly lunch spending, purchasers | 2018 | $34.00 | BLS, “Meal Appeal” |
| Families reporting lunch away from home weekly | 1997 | 60.7% | BLS, “Let’s do lunch” |
| Average weekly lunch spending per family | 1997 | $9.65 | BLS, “Let’s do lunch” |
Which restaurant formats captured lunch occasions
The 2018 BLS category with the highest lunch reporting rate was fast food, take-out, delivery, concession stands, buffets, and cafeterias, at 41.9%. This combined category is broader than fast food alone, so its percentage should not be interpreted as a standalone fast-food market share.
Full-service restaurants had a 20.3% lunch reporting rate. Employer and school cafeterias followed at 6.2%, while vending machines and mobile vendors recorded 2.3%. These are reporting rates by outlet category, not mutually exclusive shares of a fixed number of diners; one consumer unit could report more than one type of lunch purchase.
The spending figures show a different ordering from the participation figures. Average weekly lunch spending was $22.00 for the combined fast-food, take-out, delivery, concession, buffet, and cafeteria category. Full-service restaurant lunch spending averaged $37.00 per week, while employer and school cafeteria lunch spending averaged $19.00. Vending machine and mobile vendor lunch spending averaged $9.00.
| 2018 outlet category | Lunch reporting rate | Average weekly lunch spending |
|---|---|---|
| Fast food, take-out, delivery, concession, buffet, cafeteria | 41.9% | $22.00 |
| Full-service restaurants | 20.3% | $37.00 |
| Employer and school cafeterias | 6.2% | $19.00 |
| Vending machines and mobile vendors | 2.3% | $9.00 |
The contrast is useful for restaurant planning. The broad quick-service and convenience grouping had the highest reported participation, while full-service restaurants had the highest average weekly spending among the listed outlet categories. The statistics do not identify the number of meals per purchaser or explain why spending differed between categories.
Full-service restaurant lunch patterns by age
The BLS 2018 full-service figures show a modest age difference in participation. Among people age 65 and older, full-service restaurant lunch reporting was 24.1%. Among those under age 65, it was 19.1%.
Spending across all people in each age group was $9.00 per week for those age 65 and older and $7.00 for those under age 65. Among people who bought lunch at full-service restaurants, however, the average weekly lunch bill was $36.00 for the older group and $37.00 for the under-65 group.
That distinction separates participation from purchaser spending. The older group had the higher reporting rate and the higher all-group weekly average, but the under-65 purchaser average was one dollar higher. These results do not establish a causal relationship between age and restaurant spending, and they do not provide a current forecast for any particular bistro.
Household, income, and work patterns in 1997
The BLS 1997 report found clear differences across household and income groups. The fifth income quintile reported that 80.1% of families purchased lunch weekly, compared with 43.0% in the first income quintile. The fifth income quintile also reported that 87.7% of families bought at least one meal away from home weekly. In the same report, the highest income quintile allocated 37.3% of its food dollars to meals away from home overall.
The first income quintile’s reported meal allocation percentages were 17.1% for breakfast and brunch, 43.0% for lunch, 40.0% for dinner, and 31.5% for snacks and nonalcoholic beverages. These are the report’s meal-specific percentages for reported meals away from home; they should not be added together as though they were portions of one total food budget.
Household earning patterns also corresponded with different lunch-reporting rates. Single consumers with no earner reported lunch purchases for 36.8% of families weekly, compared with 59.2% for single consumers with one earner. Households of two or more persons reported lunch purchases at 46.0% with no earner, 58.6% with one earner, 69.3% with two earners, and 71.8% with three or more earners.
Household structure showed another spread. Single-person households reported lunch purchases for 51.2% of families weekly. The figure was 61.9% for husband-and-wife-only households, 70.1% for husband-and-wife-with-children households, and 58.2% for single-parent households.
Age of the reference person mattered in the 1997 data: consumer units with a reference person under 65 reported lunch purchases for 64.5% of families weekly; the figure was 49.9% for ages 65 to 74 and 41.3% for age 75 and older.
The report’s logistic model supplied modeled probabilities for specified profiles, rather than simple observed group shares. For its control group—a single man in the middle-income quintile, under 65, white or other, a high-school graduate, a homeowner with a mortgage, and living in the South—the predicted probability of buying at least one meal away from home was 79.6%. It fell to 65.5% for the first income quintile and rose to 84.4% for the fifth income quintile. For single consumers with no earners, the predicted probability was 72.5%.
For buying lunch specifically, the model predicted 68% for the control group, 59% for black single men, and 64% for Hispanic single men. It predicted 72% for Midwesterners and 64% for Westerners. These modeled values describe the report’s specified profiles and should not be generalized to every person in those demographic or regional categories.
Lunch in the wider food-away-from-home market
USDA ERS Food Expenditure Series data show the scale of the market surrounding lunch restaurants. In 2023, U.S. consumers, businesses, and government entities spent $2.57 trillion on food overall. Food spending reached $7,672 per person, up 7.5% from 2022.
Food away from home accounted for $4,485 per person in 2023, up 12.0% from $4,004 in 2022. It represented 58.5% of total food spending, the highest share in the series history. Food at home represented the remaining 41.5%.
The USDA ERS chart also shows that limited-service restaurants captured the largest share of food-away-from-home spending from 2019 through 2023. Their share was 34.6% in 2010 and peaked at 37.6% in 2020. Full- and limited-service restaurants together accounted for more than two-thirds of U.S. food-away-from-home spending in 2023. For an earlier benchmark, full-service restaurants received 35.9% of food-away-from-home spending in 2019.
These market measures cover all food-away-from-home occasions, not lunch alone. They provide context for the restaurant environment in which lunch businesses operate, but they cannot be used to derive a lunch-only market size without additional data.
Historical prices for restaurant and school meals
USDA ERS’s Quarterly Food-at-Home Price Forecasts and Historical Prices (QFAFHP) tracks prices for 20 food-away-from-home meals, items, and beverages across four outlet types: full-service restaurants, limited-service restaurants, vending machines, and schools.
School lunch prices rose 60%, from $1.37 in the first quarter of 1998 to $2.19 in the first quarter of 2012. Regional movement varied. In the first quarter of 1998, school lunches were most expensive in the West, at $1.50 per lunch. By the first quarter of 2012, the Northeast was highest at $2.48, and its school-lunch price growth from 1998 to 2012 was 97%. The South’s growth over the same period was 52%.
Across the broader food-away-from-home category, regional inflation from 1998 to 2012 ranged from 47% to 49% in the USDA ERS chart. The school-lunch figures therefore represent one specific institutional meal series, while the regional inflation range describes food away from home more broadly.
For limited-service restaurants, the average entrée or combination meal cost $3.76 in the second quarter of 2012. Limited-service sandwiches averaged $6.08 and were the most expensive limited-service item tracked in that quarter. These are historical prices, measured in 2012, and are not current menu-price estimates.