The biggest market in the world. When it comes to Professional Catering, no one beats America: the US market is the world’s largest in terms of import values, with a volume of 10 billion euros according to early estimates for 2020 with an average price for imports in 2019 of 6.09 euros a kilo.

According to forecasts drawn up by StudiaBo from the Banca Dati Ulisse, the prospects for the situation up to 2024 are good, with exports expected to grow by an average of 5.2% in euros annually. That is a decidedly positive trend compared to the years 2001-2008 (when the annual average variation in imports in euros was stuck at +0.5%). The latest forecast does, however, suggest a slight slowdown on what was the exceptional decade of 2009-2019 (+7.8%).

A market that is moving towards a higher quality of product: from 2009 to 2019 the proportion of imports accounted for by high-end goods rose from 7.5% to 8.5%, while those in the medium to low price bracket rose from 76.6% to 68.1%. Italy ranks seventh among importer countries, with 179 million euros exported in 2019, a long way behind an unreachable China (7,754 million euros with a market share of 66.5%), and Mexico (1,258 million euros and a 10.8% share), along with Thailand, Canada, South Korea and India. New countries to watch in the low-price bracket are India and Vietnam, while at the high end Germany and the UK remain at the top.

So this is a large market that is a driving force behind world demand in the sector, and one that has grown enormously in recent decades: according to Statista, since 2000 sales of food and drink consumed outside the home have more than doubled in the United States.

There again, all this “kitchen” activity is made up of more than one million sales outlets, according to the National Restaurant Association, with a turnover of 739 billion euros and a total workforce of 15.6 million. It is an extremely dynamic market, if we consider that nine restaurant managers out of ten and eight owners out of ten started out in the sector at the very bottom of the ladder, and that the industry employs the largest number of managers from minority groups than any other industry in America. While 70% of restaurants are individual concerns, restaurants offering a fast-food service have seen their revenues grow steadily over the past few years and these are now at an all-time high. And even though many establishments had to close at least temporarily in 2020 and the restaurant trade offering a complete service fell by nearly 50%, drive-ins and delivery services helped fast food concerns to reduce their losses. Small restaurants and the main restaurant chains stepped up their digital presence by introducing delivery services, a market that is growing fast: in January 2021 it was up 164% on January 2020, with 46% of Americans saying they have bought online food at least once in their lives (Second Measure-Bloomberg data). The growing popularity of home food deliveries is expected to go on influencing the foodservice sector and to remodel culinary experiences in the coming years.