Greece Food Service Market

The Greece food service industry has been hit by the economic crisis and the reduction in consumer spending as a result. Rising unemployment rates which are standing at around 16% and price rises after two recent VAT increases has reduced the consumer spending power of Greek residents. The Greece food service market and restaurants have discounted heavily to counter the reduced spending power of domestic residents.

During 2010, a significant volume of restaurants closed across all the different formats including, independent, small or large chains, domestic or multinational. McDonalds, re-evaluated their network size and downsized its network since 2007 moving from 49 outlets in 2007 to just 30 outlets in 2010. In the same vein, Starbucks also reduced their network from 74 outlets in 2008 to only 60 in 2010.

Greece full-service restaurants experienced the biggest drop in revenues with 2010 sales falling by 19% and the number of outlets reducing by 6%. Bucking this trend, were the Asian restaurants which reported 17% increase in revenue, mainly due to the cheaper service and food offered.

Lower-cost channels such as steet-stalls / kiosks ad self-service cafeterias that are normally rent-free establishments within a larger retailing operation (eg IKEA) performed better.

The Greece food service market can be segmented into the following sectors.

The following table lists the top brands by market value share operating in the Greece food service market.