This is a fascinating and insightful must-read from The Grocer magazine, into the changing habits of consumer eating and shopping habits. I’ve taken the key findings and insights from the consumer trends report, however, you can read the full report here.
It’s been a year since the UK first entered a national lockdown as the coronavirus pandemic swept across Britain. So as the country looks forward to a gradual reopening of the economy following what has been an extraordinary and transformative 12 months for grocery, what are the lasting impacts of the restrictions – and the pandemic – on Britain’s eating and shopping habits?
Eating at home – changing habits
With hospitality forced to close its doors through multiple lockdowns, UK consumers have been cooking and eating more meals at home over the past year. Households across the UK are now having 136 million more meals together at home each week than they were prior to the pandemic, according to Premier Food’s recently published Kitchen Cooking Index.
In a bid to keep things interesting, shoppers have been experimenting with a greater repertoire of dishes and flavours. One third of households have added a dish to their weekly evening meal routines – with the number of ‘go-to’ dishes households cook each week expanding from an average of 3.6 to 4.0, the report reveals.
Italian meals like pasta and risotto remain the nation’s favourite, accounting for 11.2% of total evening meal occasions, followed by roast dinners (5.7%), Indian food (4.9%) and oriental food (4.5%), the Kitchen Cooking Index found. However, the fastest-growing evening dish through the pandemic was fish & potatoes, followed by vegetarian curry and – somewhat bizarrely – chicken & mash.
This hunger for the unknown is translating to a more diverse shopping basket, according to global market research platform Appinio. Its study of 1,500 consumers published in October 2020 found 36% of UK consumers had tried a new food product in the past month. Sweets and salty snacks (27%) and frozen products (26%) were among the categories most ripe for experimentation, it revealed.
Looking beyond lockdown, the home cooking trend looks set to stay, with 73% of the 2,000 consumers surveyed by YouGov for the Kitchen Cooking Index claiming they had enjoyed their time spent in the kitchen, cooking meals for themselves and their household.
What’s more, an overwhelming majority (91%) said they intended to continue cooking at home as much as they had been the past year, or more. The cost saving potential was the biggest driver (58%), followed by the potential health benefits (58%) of cooking from home.
A healthy focus for the future
When asked about their priorities for next year, 81% of Brits surveyed by YouGov for the Kitchen Cooking Index said they wanted to eat more healthily.
With this year’s Veganuary campaign attracting over 600,000 pledges, it’s perhaps unsurprising that meat-free meals have become a more popular addition to household menus. Plant-based meals were up 46% compared with the previous year, and vegetarian meals were up 25%, the Kitchen Cooking Index reveals.
Photo by Jan Nguyen 🍁 on Unsplash
