Adnkronos Milan, October 16 (Adnkronos) – "I've been working in the out-of-home dining market for 25 years, and chain restaurants are part of this vast world. The out-of-home dining market in Italy is worth over €100 billion, and we estimate chain restaurants are worth around €10,6 billion, or 10%.
A figure that, taken alone, might not seem particularly significant, especially when compared internationally, where chains account for 33% of the total. However, if we look at it in terms of consumption occasions, we discover that out of 100 lunches, Italians eat 20 away from home." This is the comment of Bruna Boroni, director of the Away from Home Industry at TradeLab, at the 2025 edition of Aigrim Day – Chain Catering Forum, the annual event that takes stock of the evolution of the organized catering market and the main challenges of the future.
The Milan event was attended by major market players, supply chain companies, and representatives from associations and institutions. "The lunch market is highly significant, worth approximately €33 billion. We could conduct a similar analysis from a generational perspective," Boroni continues. "We know, for example, that young people who eat out choose restaurant chains 20% of the time. But chains mustn't neglect a generation that will become increasingly important in the future: baby boomers, who choose chains only 6% of their out-of-home visits, a percentage that rises to 15% if we look at the specific occasion of lunch."
Geographically, given that the Italian market is highly fragmented between bars, restaurants, and takeaways, "TradeLab records approximately 12.500 chain outlets out of a total of over 330 retail outlets," he adds, "equal to 4% nationwide. The percentage rises to 6% in the North and drops to 2% in the South, with peaks in large, wealthy cities like Milan, where it reaches over 30%, meaning that more than three out of ten retail outlets in Milan are chains." "While the restaurant industry as a whole is growing at a rate of around 3%, the chain sector is growing at 13-14%. The only slowdown we've experienced has been due to the general macroeconomic environment of the last year, when the figure dropped to 3%," he concludes.