According to the National Restaurant Association, dining venues capture 47 percent of food purchases, a number that has doubled since 1955. Of that $683.4 billion, lodging dining options account for only $34.8 billion in total dining dollars.

But hotel and lodging destinations are adapting quickly to gain a bigger piece of the pie. At the International Hotel, Motel + Restaurant Show, Peter Karpinski of the Sage Restaurant Group discussed the top five factors in the hotel dining evolution.

1. Growth of fast casual

Fast casual has been around for several decades, but now has become the fastest-growing restaurant concept in the industry. Places such as Chipotle and Panera Bread have paved the way in the evolution of fast casual.

The NPD Group recently released their third-quarter results, showing that fast casual had an 8 percent increase in consumer traffic.

Fast casual has become such an influential trend that hotels in recent years have begun switching from traditional dining to fast casual. One example would be Marriott.

In 2008, Courtyard by Marriott introduced their own fast casual concept called the Courtyard by Marriott's Bistro. Marriott described the Bistro as "coffee house meets open kitchen." Since its debut, 92 percent of hotel properties have switched from their traditional dining options to fast casual. This has also paved the way for a 27 percent increase in guests recommending and returning fur future visits to the Courtyard.

"It certainly activates the space. If you walk into a Courtyard now, instead of a vacant lobby with one person at the front desk and a bunch of empty coffee carafes you actually see people hanging out and enjoying the space," said Lou Southerland, former senior director of Global Food and Beverage for Marriott International.

Although fast casual will continue to evolve in 2015, Karpinski expects the fast casual concept to focus in more on food specialties — pizza, burgers, Indian and Asian — while catering more towards millennials and young Gen X consumers.

2. The deli reinvented

As businesses continue to cater to younger generations, restaurants face new competition from other industries such as supermarkets, who are trying to revamp their space to offer a sort of "restaurant inside the store" where customers can eat and share space. This space is usually the deli area of the supermarket.

According to Karpinski, 75 percent of supermarkets have seen an increase of sales in hot food purchases. And 67 percent of supermarkets plan on expanding their delis. What exactly do supermarkets hope to gain in changing their spaces to rival restaurants?

They want their "quality to rival restaurants, premium perception and more on-trend offerings," Karpinski said. In other words, they are looking to become what Karpinski referred to as the "grocerant."

3. Healthy evolves

When you think of healthy, the word "fresh" usually comes into mind. According to Karpinski, the word "fresh" is the most used and overused word in food marketing.

"Eighty-eight percent of menus describe their food as fresh," he said. When broken down that means the word appears "eight times per major QSR menu." And 90 percent of restaurateurs believe that the word is often misused.

Karpinski suggests there are alternatives to get the message across that the food served at your restaurant is fresh.

The first is visual assembly — 56 percent of restaurants uses this practice. It offers customers an opportunity to see their food prepared before their eyes.

The other concept is open kitchen. Another 56 percent of restaurants also provide customers a way to see how their food is cooked and assembled, providing that "fresh" look. A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review showed that restaurants with open kitchens saw a double digit increase in customer satisfaction.

"The results were pretty compelling: Customer satisfaction with the food shot up 10 percent when the cooks could see the customers, even though the customers couldn't see the cooks," said Harvard Business professor Ryan Buell. "In the opposite situation, there was no improvement in satisfaction from the baseline condition in which neither group could see the other.

"But even more striking, when customers and cooks both could see one another, satisfaction went up 17.3 percent, and service was 13.2 percent faster. Transparency between customers and providers seems to really improve service."

The evolution of healthy food has also experienced a change over the years.

What is described as "Healthy 1.0" began around 2001, which mainly focused on weight management. During that time foodies cared about how much fat, the number of calories and whether or not a food was a low-carb.

By 2005 "Healthy 2.0" was introduced. Health 2.0 were foods produced locally, natural and organic foods. As 2015 approaches, Karpinski expects a "Healthy 3.0" evolution to develop. This new group includes superfoods and proteins.

Foods with an abundance of protein are gaining attention because they satisfy hunger, are good for overall health and fuel for the body, build muscles and manage weight.

Examples of this trend are already appearing. In grocery stores, companies such as Oscar Meyer are selling P3s, which are portable protein packs. In restaurants, menus are designating meals that are high in protein.

4. Seafood and sustainability

The human population is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Global food production needs to increase by an estimated 50 percent by this time. Seafood sustainability has been gaining attention in recent years as consumers increasingly look for products from sustainable sources.

According to a survey conducted by the Marine Stewardship Council, 65 percent of supermarkets across the world agreed that it's important for supermarkets to sell sustainably-caught fish. While 61 percent of responders agreed that restaurants should show sustainable seafood options on their menus, only 6 percent of surveyors said they had seen a seafood eco-label on menus while eating.

"Restaurants do talk about sustainability a lot, but where eco-labels are concerned there aren't that many of them that a restaurant can actually use and put on the menu," says George Clark, the MSC’s U.K. manager. "The MSC's is fairly unique in that the restaurant has to go through a traceability certification process in order to use it."

5. Trends are speeding up

As restaurants continue to try to attract more consumers, the use of the menu adoption cycle (MAC) logarithm has helped to speed up the process of new trends taking over the food industry. With the MAC menu, food trends go through four stages within the cycle: ubiquity, proliferation, adoption and inception.

Food trends years ago had a life expectancy of about 10-12 years before newer trends came to life. Now that life expectancy has dwindle down to about 5-6 years.

As the year begins to come to a close, Karpinski cuisines expects to see new global begin to pop up and also ethnic mashups of cuisines.