The Russian market of public catering continues to grow, however, competition is changing its character. If earlier restaurants and cafes competed primarily with each other, today the main competitor is home cooking, ready-to-eat food from retail, and the consumer's habit of spending free time at home.
A study by the "Romir" holding, presented by Margarita Abramkina, Client Service Director, at the WorldFood Connect business platform, shows that further growth of HoReCa will depend not so much on opening new outlets, but on the ability to increase visit frequency, work more precisely with audience segments, and create value for which a guest is truly ready to leave home.
 
Market Dynamics and Demand Distribution
The "Romir" study identifies three poles of market dynamics. The largest segment by transaction volume is fast food, which accounts for about 38% of total public catering market spending. However, it is precisely this format that shows virtually no growth, being in a saturation zone.
The main growth driver has been coffee shops: transaction growth in this channel amounted to +27%, which brought them to the leaders in dynamics among all formats. The opposite pole is pizzerias, which demonstrate the most pronounced decline in transactional activity and close the rating as the most falling segment. Penetration rates of 38.6% with an order frequency of 9.8 times a year do not compensate for the general shift in consumer demand towards other formats.
Bakeries, cafe-restaurants, and canteens are growing noticeably. Particularly interesting is the multidirectional dynamics of the latter: a drop in frequency (-5.1%) is compensated by an increase in the average check (360 rubles, +12%), with penetration growing to 42.8%. This is a classic signal of the "washing out" of a regular audience. The audience of such establishments is noticeably older than the market average, and the top 5 categories — main courses, savory pastries, beverages, salads, first courses — require special attention, as they generate 70% of revenue and are the zone of greatest competitive vulnerability.
Overall, the study shows that the further growth potential of public catering is connected not so much with attracting new visitors, but with increasing the visit frequency of the existing audience. In the forecast for 2026–2027, it is precisely the growth in visit frequency that is considered one of the key conditions for maintaining positive market dynamics: in conditions of economy, the consumer does not completely refuse eating out, but actively seeks rational formats.
 
Market Structure: Segmentation by Lifecycle
For market analysis, "Romir" uses not a standard socio-demographic breakdown, but multidimensional family segmentation — households (nests) are grouped by lifecycle stage, family structure, and behavioral model.
Based on the results of 2025, five key segments are distinguished in the structure of visits (nests in shares of visits):
    1. Young – 34.9%.
    2. Mature – 25.7%.
    3. Silver – 17.6%.
    4. Without children – 10.3%.
    5. Single – 7.2%.
"Young nests" are the main driver of the market. Full young nests make 86.9 visits per year with an average check of 722 rubles (+18.4%). Incomplete "young nests" — 95.1 visits with a check of 705 rubles (+23.9%). It is this audience that feeds fast-food channels: in their orders, the share of burgers, nuggets, potatoes, and snacks is growing.
"Silver nests" form stable regular traffic. Active silver increases the average check to 614 rubles (+15.4%) with a frequency of 74.4 visits; inactive ones rely on frequency — 75.8 visits per year (+15.3%) with a more moderate check. Their base channel is canteens, in the order structure — beverages, main courses, and savory pastries.
The Russian public catering market is transitioning to a phase of intensified inter-format competition, formed by a triangular model: HoReCa (restaurants, cafes, canteens), ready-to-eat food in retail (a growing competitor), home cooking (the standard of control, benefit, and familiar taste). According to "Romir", in recent years, the number of chains with average values in terms of trust and awareness has been increasing — this indicates an expansion of the competitive field and tougher struggle for consumer attention and loyalty.
The key threat to background and everyday scenarios is created precisely by retail with ready-to-eat food: it actively participates in forming the buyer's "third place", covers a full meal, offering speed, price, and minimal energy expenditure. The weak point of restaurants is the perceived complexity of the visit: choosing a place, travel, waiting, communication.
In these conditions, according to "Romir", restaurants should:

• simplify the visit scenario — pre-order, takeaway, contactless payment, quick solutions;
• enhance uniqueness — reliance on dishes, atmosphere, and emotions that cannot be bought in a store;
• work with loyalty — turning a regular visit into a sustainable habit.

The HoReCa market is highly heterogeneous. Its "architecture" is set by five behavioral segments, each of which requires different formats, pricing policies, and communication channels. At the same time, the competitive field is expanding due to retail and home catering, and the struggle is shifting from the plane of "who tastes better" to the plane of "who is faster, more convenient, and creates more value per visit".
 
Paradigm Shift: Not so much home food, as home itself
The most important conclusion of the study concerns the competition between consumption scenarios: the main opponent of restaurateurs is not a neighboring establishment, but home as a space where they cook, eat, and relax.
42% of respondents believe that in 2026 they will eat home food more often and will build up this habit. The age group of 25–34 is switching to faster and cheaper formats, while 76% of the entire pool of respondents are not ready to completely switch to eating out or replace home cooking with restaurant food and ready meals from stores.
When consumers cut expenses, they most often replace trips to cafes with home meals. This was answered by 41% of study participants. Another 33% prefer to spend free time at home instead of going out into the city. For a significant part of consumers, the alternative is home cooking, ready-to-eat food from retail, delivery, taxi, and even home leisure and entertainment.
For the market, this means that the struggle is no longer just for the choice of a specific establishment, but for the very decision of a person to leave the house.
The study structures these threats faced by the HoReCa market into two groups — external and internal challenges. External challenges are what happens outside a specific establishment but directly affects consumer behavior. Internal challenges are what operators can control but often underestimate: maintaining quality and taste, pricing policy, loss of location convenience, emotional burnout of the audience ("tired of it"). It is here that the potential for growth in frequency and audience retention is laid.
The task of operators is to focus on internal challenges: quality, price, convenience, and emotional experience. It is here that the potential lies for turning a "rare or stopped visiting guest" into a "regular one".
 
HoReCa Trends 2026-2027 as a Challenge
The response to the described challenges is five strategic directions, which the "Romir" holding identifies as key trends in HoReCa development in 2026:
  1. Emotional marketing, gamification, collaborations. In conditions where a guest perceives a visit as a conscious choice rather than a basic need, establishments need to create reasons for returning that go beyond food. Gamified loyalty programs, brand collaborations, and event formats form emotional attachment and turn a one-time visit into a sustainable habit.
  2. Gastronomic fashion: menu expansion, Asian cuisine. The introduction of Asian flavors is becoming a sustainable direction. At the same time, the evolution of demand is going from complex and status decisions towards understandable food with elements of nostalgia: onigiri are taking the place of popular sushi, becoming a new favorite of the everyday menu. It is important for operators to balance between gastronomic trends and the request for familiar, predictable tastes.
  3. Digitalization, cashless technologies, delivery. Omnichannelity has ceased to be a trend and has become a basic expectation of the audience. The buyer moves freely between formats, combining offline and online, and makes a purchase decision based on the convenience of the scenario. Digitalization and reduction of operating costs, contactless payments, online pre-order, takeaway food are not options, but mandatory elements of service. As Margarita Abramkina notes, the winner is the one who enhances both utilitarian value (speed, convenience, digital services) and the emotional component.
  4. Food halls, summer verandas, creating a unique experience. Establishments capable of offering an alternative space for rest and recovery remain competitive. Food halls as a format of choice concentration and summer verandas as a seasonal advantage are becoming tools in the struggle for "leaving the house" — against leisure on the couch.
  5. Focus on the evening and "lazy" segment. The demand for convenience and evening leisure is growing: evening menus, drink promotions, complex "food at home" solutions (sets for parties and family dinners) with the simplest possible ordering and delivery. This is a direct response to the "stay home" trend: establishments do not try to pull the guest out at any cost, but go to his home with ready-made solutions.
The listed directions are not "fashionable hobbies", but a systemic response to the structural challenges of the market. Operators who invest in these five tracks form a sustainable competitive advantage. Those who ignore them risk losing connection with the audience, which has already restructured its expectations.
 
Ready-to-eat Food — Not an Alternative, but a Part of Everyday Life
A few years ago, many market participants perceived ready-to-eat food from stores as a separate segment.
Now the boundaries are blurring:

• 62% of buyers simultaneously use both HoReCa and ready-to-eat food from retail.
• 33% choose exclusively HoReCa, and only ready-to-eat food — only 5%.

At the same time, the category continues to grow:

• Penetration of ready-to-eat food has reached 53.3%.
• The share of repeat buyers exceeds 81%.

Categories such as porridges, first courses, pancakes and syrniki, onigiri, and pickles are growing most actively.
Despite the growth of ready-to-eat food, when reducing the budget, the consumer is twice as likely to refuse ready-made lunches from the store (34%) than trips to cafes and restaurants (14%). Ready-to-eat food remains for the majority a fallback option during a period of economy, and not a sustainable replacement for the restaurant experience. As soon as the budget recovers, the consumer returns to establishments.
In HoReCa, the share of heavy users is 2.4 times higher (22% vs. 9%) than in the ready-to-eat food segment. This means that the restaurant format retains a more loyal audience with high consumption frequency. Ready-to-eat food from stores, despite the growth of penetration, remains predominantly an episodic choice for 75% of its buyers.
 
Evolution of Value Orientations
But it's not just about what exactly they eat. Much more important is what drives the choice of an establishment. And here the study records a fundamental restructuring of consumer value orientations.
The HoReCa market is undergoing a structural transformation: competition is shifting from the product plane to the value plane. According to "Romir", the structure of values on which the consumer relies when choosing an establishment is changing dramatically, coming to the fore:

• Reliability — stability of quality, predictability of service, and understandable value of the offer;
• Family and family format — request for an atmosphere comfortable for joint visits;
• Honesty — transparency of pricing, absence of hidden fees, correspondence of expectations to reality;
• Financial affordability — a fair price for quality;
• Attractiveness and emotional experience — atmosphere, service, staff as part of the value.

At the same time, the importance of the external status and "fashionability" of establishments and demonstrativeness as motivation for a visit is decreasing.
Loyalty today is formed as a combination of basic factors (food, price, location) and additional advantages (atmosphere, service, staff, emotional experience). This means that competition in the market is moving from the struggle for traffic to the struggle for the consumer's long-term attitude.
Age differentiation of values is also important. "Romir" records differences in value priorities depending on age:
respondents aged 25–34 more often highlight enlightenment and rebellion,

• 35–44 — inspiration,
• the oldest group (56+) — financial well-being.

For operators, this means that a single value proposition for all segments does not work — a segmented approach is required. It is precisely here that the base is formed on which loyalty is built or destroyed.
 
Coffee is no longer a prerogative of catering
Separate attention deserves the category of ready hot coffee in grocery retail — one of the most dynamic segments, which in recent years has radically changed the structure of consumption.
According to "Romir", the penetration of the category grew from 30.3% to 35.3% over 2024–2025, the average check increased by 13.5% (to 109 rubles). The category is experiencing a noticeable redistribution of demand: consumer choice is increasingly determined not by the status of the point of sale, but by the convenience of the consumption scenario. By 2026, the share of Russians buying coffee in grocery chains and convenience stores has grown more than 2 times — from 17% to 35%.
For restaurants and cafes, this is a direct signal: coffee traffic is going to convenience stores. They will have to strengthen the uniqueness of the coffee experience — taste, atmosphere, service — in order to retain the audience that increasingly chooses "coffee on the go".
 
Why Guests Leave: Diagnostic Map
The market is becoming more pragmatic. The values described above directly affect guest behavior: the study shows that the reasons for customer churn are directly related to disappointment in basic expectations.
The study records four main reasons for changing a regular establishment, arranged in order of importance:
    1. Food became tasteless or product quality deteriorated — 24%.
    2. Prices were raised — it became unaffordable to go as often — 19%.
    3. Location change — moving or changing jobs, it became inconvenient to go — 17%;
    4. Tired of it, wanted to try something new — 15%.
For operators, this diagnostic map gives clear zones of responsibility:

• 24% leave because of quality — this is the zone of production and supplier control; the problem is solvable by internal efforts;
• 19% leave because of prices — this is the zone of price positioning; either a revision of prices or strengthening of perceived value is required;
• 17% leave because of location — this is the zone of geography and routes, which can be compensated by delivery or expansion of presence;
• 15% leave because of novelty — this is the zone of impression management, requiring an update of the menu, atmosphere, or formats.

It is indicative that the loyalty formula of 2026 looks quite traditional: food, prices, location, atmosphere, and staff. It is these factors that form the basis of long-term relationships with the guest.
 
Atmosphere as part of the product
Despite the growth of rationality, the emotional component has not disappeared anywhere.
For the majority of visitors (40–45%), a modern but warm interior is important — a balance between aesthetics and comfort. At the same time, almost every third (32–39%) does not pay attention to design at all, focusing exclusively on cleanliness and food quality. As for staff, for 38% of guests, personal recognition is a key element of loyalty, and another 37% perceive it as a pleasant bonus. Only 13% are satisfied with anonymity and speed.
All this is especially important against the background of the general trend of searching for "places of power". For the majority (74%), such a place remains home, however, cafes and restaurants retain the potential to become an alternative space for rest and recovery.
 
HoReCa 2026-2027: What's Next
The "Romir" study shows that further market growth will depend not so much on opening new outlets, but on targeted work with audience segments. The mass consumer is becoming less and less homogeneous, and universal offers work worse. Further market growth lies in working not with the buyer as a whole, but with focus groups, a deep understanding of segments, and closing their specific needs. In 2026, it is already critically important to be able to segment, personalize, and create value for each group of visitors.
 
The forecast models of the "Romir" holding for 2026–2027 operate with specific target indicators:
 

• To implement the optimistic scenario, the market needs to reach a visit frequency range of 77–83 visits per year per buyer.
• The target range of market penetration in this scenario is 67.6%–70.8% of the total food wallet.
   

The winners will be those players who can simultaneously ensure quality, predictability of service, a reasonable price, and a clear reason for the consumer to leave the house.
 
Original: https://tpmag.ru/articles/horeca/horeca-2026-s-worldfood-connect/