EATING OUT SURVEY

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 2

EATING OUT SURVEY

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, June 24. The average British husband takes his wife out to dinner three or four times a year and is so tired of her company that he insists on making up dinner parties. “Men are very reluctant to leave their firesides,” says Mr J. McKenzie, a research sociologist at London University who is carrying out an investigation into what affects the customer’s choice of food. He has discovered that when husbands are eventually pushed into the occasion by their wives, they will always make for restaurants where they have been before and know the standard of the service. “When the menu is presented,” he says, “ a husband will never choose an exotic dish. They are afraid of rriak-

ing mistakes and will generally go for predictable meals like soup and prawn cocktail, followed by steak or chicken with fruit salad for sweet.” Mr McKenzie, whose report on “British eating out” has

been offered as guidance to caterers throughout Britain, has now produced a national questionnaire directed at more than 1000 people. “But there are about 5 per cent of young couples who!

try to create a ‘with-it’ image by visiting continental and foreign restaurants,” admits Mr McKenzie, who dines out about five times a week mostly at soneone else’s expense.

People in the 55 to 65 age group hardly dine out at all unless they are fairly prosperous. “It’s not only the cost I that discourages them,” says Mr McKenzie, “they don’t like ' the frills and pomp of it.”