Aussie Fast Food customers are looking for alternatives to the market leaders, with emerging brands continuing to increase presence amongst their customers as they deliver unique and fresher offerings.
Fonto’s Moments in QSR data, which uses daily transaction data to track market share and understand competitive advantages within the category, showed significant movements when viewing frequency of purchase and average spend metrics.
While McDonald’s market share remained stable for the period at almost 42%, customers visited it 5% less frequently and spent 5.4% less on average than the year prior.
Meanwhile emerging brands such as Grill’d, Guzman Y Gomez and Crust managed to bring their customers back more frequently and to increase the average spend per customer:
- Grill’d’s frequency of purchase increased by 14.9%, with average spend per customer lifting by 10.6% when compared to the December 2023 period. Crust Pizza, although a smaller player with just 3% market share, managed to increase its frequency of purchase by 10.5% and spend per customer by 7.3%.
- Guzman Y Gomez, which recently announced a 27% increase in revenue, lifted customer frequency of purchase by 5% and spend per customer by almost 6%. Market share accordingly lifted from 3.0 to 4.2%, demonstrating significant growth on the back of new store locations meeting the increased demand.
While it’s worth noting that the average basket size for Crust and Grill’d dropped slightly, the gains per customer more than outweighed the loss in individual transaction size.
Ben Dixon, CEO of Fonto said: “We are seeing customers embracing alternatives, especially ones that promote fresher ingredients, even in the fast food space. Where Domino’s has recently faced challenges in product quality, Crust continues to bring customers back, spending more. Where consumers are looking for fresher, higher quality burger alternative, Grill’d is taking share and loyalty away from the larger chains. GyG’s overall brand promise as healthier fast food is also clearly working, with their sales and profit up across the board.”
With mental and physical availability still primary factors in the purchase decision (McDonald’s has more than 1,000 Australian locations), GyG and Crust plan to open 30 and 12 new stores in 2025 respectively. While Grill’d has not announced specific store plans for 2025, it opened 16 new locations in 2024.
To access Moments in QSR data for your brand, reach out to the Fonto team using the contact form on this page.
FONTO DATA
More than 85,000 Australians share their daily financial transaction data privately and securely with Fonto, allowing us to accurately understand their buyer behaviour over time. We also survey them shortly after purchases to better understand the 'why' behind their consumer behaviour. Moments in QSR surveys fast food customers to align customer intent and experience with their actual spending habits.
