CHICAGO – Soup isn’t the easiest food to consume on the go, what with needing a spoon to eat it and having to avoid messy dribbles on the chin and/or shirt front. But what soup has going for it is its aura of being affordable, comforting and hearty, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports.

Increasingly, fast-food restaurants are putting soup on the menu. Soup servings at U.S. restaurants jumped 3% in the year ending July 2013, according to NPD. QSRs sold 8% more than soup than a year earlier.

Zoup!, a soup chain based in Michigan, grew close to twofold this past year, and now has 57 locations with $32 million in sales predicted for this year, a 26.6% bump. “In 1998, when I started, the challenge was the perception that it was a side dish,” said Eric Ersher, Zoup founder and CEO. It took a while, but “folks began to view soup as a meal. The most popular is the meal-size portion,” he said.

Pushing the category forward is low-cost and speed of service. Technomic data found that soup has seen close to 50% growth on fast-food menus over the past five years, but that it’s still less common on menus at fine-dining and casual restaurants. “Another factor driving soup’s growth is that it’s popular with those 50 and older, and this age group is visiting restaurants more than any other age group,” said Bonnie Riggs, NPD restaurant industry analyst.