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We’ve been doing Retail Industry Reports for quite some time, and while each is uniquely insightful, we’ve found they generally tend to cover the same verticals (fashion and apparel, electronics, home improvement, toys, etc.) and the same topics (omnicahnnel, in-store experiences, purchase trends etc.). These are all important, of course, but for our 2020 Retail Industry Report, we wanted to look a bit more into the future and a bit more off the beaten path.

Yet fast casual remains a singular force in food service, one that continues to dominate the cultural landscape. So, a little more than a decade into its reign, we thought we’d check in on the industry: what do consumers want from a fast casual experience, what are they actually getting, and how can operators start to bridge the difference? What concepts most excite consumers, which seem passé at this point, and what can QSR and casual dining operators learn from all of this? These are some of the questions we set out to answer in our 2019 Fast Casual Food Industry Report.

It’s a pretty good time to be dropping a market research retail industry report. We are in the midst of the yearly retail bonanza that is the holiday season, and news of traditional retailers either rebranding and rebounding or simply failing to adapt litter business blogs (yes, including this one). Meanwhile, upstart digital-only retailers seemingly emerge every day to bring new challenges to brick-and-mortar’s doorstep.

Grocery shopping ain’t what it used to be. With omnichannel and digital-only challengers threatening legacy grocery’s status quo, operators are racing to build out their omnichannel operations, ranging from in-store pickup of digitally ordered items (click and collect) to rapid grocery delivery (Amazon’s got it down to 2 hours or less).

We are doing things a bit differently this year. As you may have noticed, we have done away with our Pre-Holiday Reports, retiring them after five great years of forecasting and exploring purchase intentions. Our reasoning: Pre-Holiday Reports, we have heard from our Retail industry and CPG industry clients, do not provide adequate time to put insights into action—by the time shoppers have shaped their holiday purchase intentions, retailers have necessarily already completed their holiday preparations.