Eating in has become the new eating out thanks to the credit crunch - and this can only be good news for petrol retailers.

It's the question that keeps many people going throughout the working day - what to have for dinner tonight. When we were all kids our mums would often map out the meals for the week ahead but with most mums working nowadays, dinner can be a bit more of a hit and miss affair.

Not everyone plans their weekly meals. Busy mums on tight schedules might have to, but the rest of us probably make up our menus as we go along. And that's good news for forecourt retailers who can cash in on customers who are shopping for 'tonight's dinner'.

One in three people look for quick and easy-to-prepare foods during the week, according to Mintel's latest Evening Meal report. And for time-strapped commuters forecourts are often a convenient place to stop and pick up something for dinner.

The first ever ‘TV dinner’ went on sale in the United States in 1953. Costing just 98 cents, it comprised turkey with a cornbread dressing and gravy, sweet potato and peas. It was the brainwave of travelling salesman Gerry Thomas who had to come up with an idea to use up 270 tons of uneaten Thanksgiving turkey. On his travels he’d seen metal trays being tested for in-flight hot dinners and decided to use the technology himself. However his metal trays were put in cartons that replicated TV sets complete with knobs. The dinners were an instant success – 10 million were sold in the first 10 months and so the TV dinner or ready meal was born.