It’s not just food brands such as McDonald’s, TGI Fridays and Applebee’s that have been struggling in the past few years. Fast food sales have been on the decline for a while now, largely due to today’s internet savvy generation, which is much more aware of health concerns, as well as a general distaste for fast food among millennials.
Many fast food chains have taken swift actions to alleviate these declining sales figures. Brands such as Burger King have recently introduced vegan burgers as a way to attract younger audiences that are much more conscious, both ethically and health-wise. These fast food chains also place a lot more emphasis on providing as much information about their food as possible, which is in stark contrast to the way things used to be managed in these places.
They Spend More Money to Rent Apartments In Metropolitan Areas
About 88% of all millennials live in metropolitan areas. This is one of the most interesting statistics ever, when you consider that we're talking about an entire generation of people. One of the reasons that today’s millennials find themselves living paycheck to paycheck is the high rent they end up paying.
Almost no millennials choose to live in rural areas. This is caused by a variety of reasons, some political, some social and some economical. Either way, it’s clearly a problem that needs addressing, because rents just keep going up, right along with student tuition, choking these millennials financially to the point of living paycheck to paycheck.
Traditional Book Sales Are Declining Rapidly In Favor of Audiobooks
When you visit the house of almost anyone over thirty, you’re bound to find a library full of books. The older generation has even bigger libraries, because they never had electronic books. With the rise of Amazon’s Kindle and eBooks, millennials have a much stronger preference towards digital books than physical ones. Why take the effort of carrying around physical books from rental apartment to rental apartment, when you can have a library of thousands of books on your phone?
Another new trend that has developed in the last few years is purchasing Audiobooks. These have been proven to be just as effective as reading regular books (with some small exceptions). Services such as Amazon’s Audible are currently offering a free first book to get new customers through the door, which only further adds to their popularity.
Millennials Are Not Into Golfing
Golf is one of America's favorite pastimes. The rich and famous love to golf, your parents and grandparents love to golf, even most presidents are known for golfing a few times every week. The problem with this sport when it comes to millennials comes from two different reasons.
First, millennials simply can’t afford to golf anymore. It’s one of the more expensive pastimes you can have, and when most millennials spend their last dollars on rent and food, there’s not much if anything left for golfing. The second problem with golf is that it’s simply too slow and boring for today’s generation. Our attention spans are severely shorter than that of the previous generation.
Bye Bye Regular Milk
When our parents went to the grocery store to buy milk, they bought classic cow milk. The market was practically limited to the options of either nonfat, whole or two percent milk, with only a tiny fringe of alternative products. Nowadays, any food store you walk into will contain everything from almond milk to soy milk and just about every other type of vegan milk you can think of.
Millennials today are becoming increasingly vegan, or at least opting to avoid dairy and go for more natural forms of milk. While this transition has been linked to higher levels of estrogen, it’s clear that the trend is only going to continue in the coming years. Milk sales are already down almost 50% since the ‘70s, and meat is also seeing a massive decline in the past decade, as soy products become more and more popular.