Grab-And-Go Meals is one of five revenue streams for Clean Eatz Cafes
This summer, more Americans are hitting the road than in recent memory, and that means more demand for Grab-And-Go meals along the way. A 2026 Numerator survey found that 78% of Americans plan to take a summer vacation this year. That’s a sharp jump from 61% who traveled in 2025. Road trips are leading the surge. A GSTV travel insights report cited by the National Association of Convenience Stores found that 72% of consumers plan to travel by car this summer. More than half, 57%, said they plan to travel even more this summer than they did last year.
Here’s the catch. Travel and healthy eating rarely go together. The same GSTV report tracked what people buy when they stop along the way. Among travelers who stop at convenience stores, 45% pick up snacks and drinks. Soda and soft drinks are the top purchase for nearly a quarter of those shoppers. It’s a familiar pattern. Gas station snacks replace real meals. Drive-through windows replace balanced plates. Vending machines fill in the gaps. The result follows people home. According to Cleveland Clinic, travelers typically return from trips heavier than when they left, and research from the University of Georgia shows those extra pounds tend to stick around longer than a vacation tan.
For most restaurant brands, this is a seasonal blip. For Clean Eatz franchisees, it’s an opening to put Grab-And-Go meals in front of exactly the customers who need them most.
Grab-And-Go Meals Aren’t a Niche Anymore
It helps to understand why Grab-And-Go meals have become such a dominant force in foodservice, well beyond just summer travel. According to a Hubert US industry report, grab-and-go meals have gone up 72% since the pandemic, and 80% of customers are more likely to choose a business that offers grab-and-go options. That same report found that food is 51% more likely to get purchased when it carries a “ready to eat” label. This isn’t a passing fad. It’s a fundamental shift in how people want to eat, especially when they’re away from home and short on time.
Clean Eatz never built its model around a drive-through window, and that turns out to be an advantage rather than a limitation. Drive-throughs are built for speed at the expense of nutrition. Most drive-through menus are fried, processed, and engineered for a quick sale, not a healthy one. Clean Eatz franchisees compete differently. The Grab-And-Go case, stocked with fresh, balanced, ready-to-eat meals, lets a customer walk in, grab exactly what they need, and get back on the road in minutes. No ordering wait. No menu board decisions. Just real food, ready when they are.
A traveler stocking the cooler before a long drive, or stopping mid-trip for something better than a gas station sandwich, is exactly the customer this model was built to serve. Where a typical fast-food stop means processed, calorie-dense food, a Clean Eatz location offers a faster, healthier alternative without asking the traveler to slow down or change their plans.
A Revenue Stream Built for This Exact Moment
This is more than a feel-good story about healthy eating. Grab-And-Go Meals are one of Clean Eatz’s five core revenue streams, alongside Meal Plans, the In-Store Cafe, Retail, and Catering. That means the summer travel surge doesn’t just bring foot traffic into the cafe. It drives sales directly into a dedicated, frozen, pre-packaged product line built specifically for customers who need something fast and healthy without sitting down to eat it. For franchisees, that’s a built-in way to capture incremental revenue from a customer who might otherwise have just driven past.
The Scale of the Opportunity
This demand is not small. More than 120 million Americans are traveling this summer alone, according to NerdWallet’s 2026 summer travel report. And the timing lines up well for Clean Eatz locations. Numerator’s research found that mid-summer is the most popular travel window, with July alone accounting for 43% of vacationers. That puts peak travel demand squarely in the middle of the season when franchisees are already seeing strong local traffic.
The behavior extends beyond the open road, too. Demand for Grab-And-Go meals is climbing across grocery stores, convenience stores, and quick-service brands of every kind, not just for summer travelers but for busy households year-round. Clean Eatz franchisees are positioned to capture a piece of that broader shift while also benefiting from the specific summer surge in road trips and vacation traffic.
A System Built to Capture It
This is where scale matters. With 125 locations now operating across the country, Clean Eatz franchisees sit along many of the same highways, interstates, and travel corridors that millions of Americans use to reach their summer destinations. A traveler who already relies on Clean Eatz at home doesn’t have to break that habit on the road. And a traveler discovering the brand’s Grab-And-Go meals for the first time during a trip becomes a potential regular once they’re back home.
For prospective franchisees evaluating the opportunity, this seasonal pattern is worth paying close attention to. It represents a built-in driver of foot traffic and product sales that doesn’t depend solely on local population growth or marketing spend. It’s a behavioral shift, the rise of Grab-And-Go meals and the predictable wave of summer travel, that plays directly into one of the brand’s five built-in revenue streams.
The Bottom Line
Millions of people will spend this summer in cars, at rest stops, and in unfamiliar towns. Most of them will eat worse for it. Clean Eatz franchisees have a real chance to be the exception travelers are looking for, the stop that doesn’t derail their routine. For a healthy franchise system still in its growth phase, that kind of organic, demand-driven visibility, built around Grab-And-Go meals, is hard to manufacture and easy to build on.