Harvest Public Media has a piece that investigates why fast casual concepts like Panera are taking the restaurant world by storm. They journey to Colorado, arguably the heart of the fast casual revolution, to figure out why these restaurants are so appealing. They found that fast casual’s ascendance may have been helped by the 2008 recession that caused people who would have previously eaten at sit-down places to look for cheaper options. These customers still expected the food quality at restaurants they visited to be high, generating demand for premium quick service options like Chipotle and Smashburger.
Read the full article here: Why Fast-Casual Restaurants are Surging
