Grab-and-Go Lounges Are Everywhere. Do Travelers Actually Want Them?

Airport lounges used to be the place you went to slow down. Lately, many of them are built for the opposite: feeding you and getting you back to your gate as fast as possible.

Grab-and-go counters, quick-serve markets, and even standalone “fly” lounges have shown up across the country over the past few years. But a trend catching on with airlines and lounge operators doesn’t automatically mean travelers want more of it.

We asked our readers how they really feel about the grab-and-go lounge trend.

How Grab-and-Go Took Over the Airport Lounge

The shift arguably began in 2021, when Capital One opened its first lounge at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW). Alongside the sit-down food and the barista bar, it offered take-away items you could grab on your way out the door. It seemed like a small touch at the time, but it turned out to be a preview of where the whole category was headed.

United took the idea and built an entire concept around it. United Club Fly locations strip the lounge down to the part that many travelers actually use in a hurry, letting you grab a snack, a drink, or a barista-made coffee and keep moving.

United was the first major U.S. airline to launch a grab-and-go club, opening in Denver in November 2022 and adding a second location in Houston in February 2025. Both are big connecting hubs, and the pitch is simple: If you have a short layover, you don’t have to choose between a decent bite and making your flight.

Others have followed with their own spin. Air Canada just opened its fourth grab-and-go lounge, and Provisions by Admirals Club has debuted as American Airlines’ grab-and-go offering.

Even the high end of the market has embraced the format. Inside Delta’s flagship Delta One Lounge at New York (JFK), a full 140-seat brasserie anchors the dining experience, but there’s also a Market with quick bites for anyone who doesn’t have 90 minutes to spare. The same lounges serve both the traveler who wants to linger and the one who’s anxiously watching the clock.

Add it all up, and grab-and-go has gone from a novelty to somewhat of an industry standard.

Do Travelers Actually Want This?

Here’s the thing about trends: They tell you what companies are doing, not necessarily what customers want. It’s fair to wonder whether operators lean into grab-and-go because a counter and a cooler case cost less to run than a full kitchen and a staffed buffet or because it moves more people through a crowded space to negate complaints about waiting times.

Those reasons make sense for the provider. They don’t automatically align with what you’re hoping for when you head to an airport lounge. To find out, we ran polls across our social media channels to better understand.

A little over two-thirds of readers (67.7%) said they like the grab-and-go trend, while 32.3% said they’d rather have traditional lounge food, such as plated meals or a proper buffet.

That’s a solid majority in favor. However, there’s also a sizable minority of people who aren’t sold, and roughly a third of travelers wanting something different is worth paying attention to. But even that clean split undersells how people actually behave, because the same person can want opposite things on different days.

Picture a tight 40-minute connection in which you’re speed-walking between concourses. On that trip, a grab-and-go counter is exactly right, and a sit-down menu is a nonstarter. Now picture a 4-hour layover the following week on your return flight. Suddenly, the plated meal and the quiet corner have great appeal, and a cooler case of sandwiches feels like a letdown.

In other words, it’s rarely a matter of grab-and-go versus traditional. It’s a matter of which one fits the trip you’re on right now. The 67.7% and the 32.3% aren’t necessarily 2 different groups of people. In many cases, they’re the same travelers on 2 different days.

Final Thoughts

Grab-and-go isn’t replacing the traditional lounge, and our poll suggests most travelers are glad it’s an option. The best version of this trend is that many lounges offer both options, so you can match the visit to the trip instead of settling for whatever your airline or credit card lounge offers.

There’s an element of this trend worth watching, though: whether lounge operators use grab-and-go as a reason to scale back the sit-down experience. If that happens, the goodwill behind that 67.7% poll number could fade fast.