Johns Creek, Georgia, USA-headquartered Dinova LLC, along with The BTN Group, on June 6 released the results of a study showing that business dining is one of the more undermanaged areas of corporate expense budgets in the United States.
According to the survey, 40 percent of respondents reported that their company spent $1 million or more on meals and entertainment in 2015. While consumer dining spending apparently decreased or remained flat last year, 39 percent of travel managers responding to the survey indicated that their business dining expenses rose in 2015. Forty-one percent of those sampled said the increase was due to more volume of business meals purchased. Nineteen percent of respondents also noted increased use of catering or large group carry-in orders.
The business dining expense comes in a variety of ways, including out-of-town travelers, marketing and events, client entertainment, internal business catering and private dining. When asked which restaurants are most frequented by business employees eating on expense accounts:
- 33 percent said fast-casual
- 34 percent stated independent restaurants
- 16 percent replied chain-dining establishments
- 14 percent said quick-service restaurants
When asked what percentage of meals and dining expenditures occur in employees’ home markets versus on-the-road business travel, only 10 percent of respondents indicated that 50 percent or more meal expenses are at home while 29 percent indicate less than 10 percent of meal spending is in home markets. In fact, 55 percent reported that the increase of travel to new destinations was one of the contributing factors for increased business dining costs.
Curiously, more than half of the organization’s respondents reported they have yet to focus on dining spending as an area of savings significance. And when it came to how often meal expenditures are reported to management:
- 39 percent said as requested by management
- 33 percent replied monthly
- 14 percent said quarterly
- 6 percent stated annually
- 20 percent said never
“With 80 percent of respondents indicating business dining expenses within their organization are reported to senior management, it’s advantageous for travel managers to reclaim a portion of the overall company dining spend,” said Vic Macchio, founder and chief executive officer at Dinova. “We estimate the business dining spend to be around $60 billion, and the ability to manage this spend is critical in overall T&E savings. It’s found money!”
The survey gathered responses from 114 corporate travel, card or expense managers across various industries. For a copy of the full white paper, send request to: hthompson@dinova.com.
