n Data from research company him!, based on interviews with consumers leaving outlets, show that hot food shoppers have a low visit frequency, but buy more products and spend more each trip.

Retailers would be well-advised to increase visit frequency with methods such as offering daily specials to grow hot food sales, says the company. There are other areas retailers can look at to improve food-to-go sales, such as linking breakfast and lunch. Between the hours of 7am and 10am, over a third of sandwich shoppers are in the outlet to buy breakfast, but over half are there to buy lunch. Breakfast and lunch combo meal deals could boost sales.

The tables below give a good indication of the types of savoury food products typically bought in coffee shops, sandwich bars and high street bakeries, benchmarked against the food-to-go average (which includes convenience stores, forecourts and other retail outlets).