No one’s betting on Boomers to be a #fastfood growth engine. Yet, many #QSR bran
By Mikeblack · May 29, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
No one’s betting on Boomers to be a #fastfood growth engine.
Yet, many #QSR brands I study show an imbalance of resonating strongly with older adults vs younger generations.
This chart gives some examples.
The pattern exists across other categories I study too.
(#CPG I’m looking at you!)
Brands that resonate with Boomers deserve high praise.
They built equity through years of marketing and menu innovation and customer experience refinement.
The problem is:
The consumer changed, and they didn’t.
It’s not easy to adapt.
#GenZ is more complex than many generations before it.
They are a tapestry of different ethnic backgrounds, values and identities.
Their very complexity defies the one size fits all broad reach advertising methods of the Don Draper era.
To win with them, you must think “micro segmenting” vs “segmentation.”
Few brands are prepared or equipped with the right intelligence to do that.
Which is why we see such large generational relevance gaps.
And since #culturalrelevance is a large predictor of purchase intent, it stands to reason that brands on the wrong end of the age spectrum will fail to grow in the long run.
And we are just talking about Gen Z here …
Gen Alpha deserves its own strategy unto itself.
For our full QSR cultural relevance benchmarks, see the link below 👇