A Return to the Kitchen, How to Spend a Grand, Etc.

It doesn’t take a recession or a war to push us out of restaurants and into our kitchens. In its annual Report on Eating Patterns in America, the NPD Group finds such a shift was already in motion last year. The number of meals eaten in a restaurant per person slid to 64 in 2000 from 66 in 1999. People were also ordering fewer takeout meals—70 in 2000, versus 73 in 1999. As a consequence, the percentage of meals prepared at home rose (albeit barely) for the first time since 1992.