Consumers Cooking at Home
According to the Institute of Food Technologists, inflation is driving Gen Z and millennial consumers back to the kitchen—six in 10 people age 25-34 are cooking more dinners at home than last year—and they want their meals easy and economical, healthy, at times plant-based, and sometimes saucy and spicy (perhaps experimenting with recipes to replicate the dining-out experience). Now, each of those could be a fully baked trend in and of itself, but the big takeaway here is that higher-priced food and restaurant staffing shortages have made cooking at home more attractive. Online research behaviors reflect this, too: searches for “air fryers” have remained above pre-pandemic levels, and interest in “meal kits” and related phrases continues to trend.
 
To appeal to the at-home chef, food marketers can benefit from showing how easy it is to cook with their ingredients (and maybe even offer some 30-minute quick-prep recipes), how cost-effective their options are, and how yummy the plated product appears on the dinner table.
 
Digital and E-commerce
The trend of cooking at home requires food from the grocery store, but many consumers are opting to buy their groceries from the comfort of their own homes: e-commerce will make up more than 10% of grocery sales in 2023, Walmart’s digital revenue, and “click-and-collect” grocery sales are forecasted to rise steadily as a share of that e-commerce. And for those who want to skip cooking altogether, intermediary delivery services (think GrubHub or DoorDash) are poised to grow in the next half-decade, too.
 
Even Prime Day in July 2022 saw food and grocery purchases grow 12% year over year, the third highest category growth of the year for the annual online megasale.
Meal kits also fit into this category, and although the post-pandemic near-term saw users drop their subscriptions, the market outlook sees meal kits growing from a $6.9 billion industry in 2021 to more than $10 billion in 2024.
 
Investing in your digital presence can help your brand(s) stand out—or, at least, keep up—in this increasingly competitive space. The flexibility and nimble nature of programmatic advertising can help you navigate today’s unpredictable market, and it can put your most valuable messages in front of your most valuable customers in their true moment of need. And as consumers spend more of their food and beverage budget via digital channels, combined with the fragmented and complex nature of the digital space, brands can also benefit from investing in digital advertising automation tools to streamline processes, keep up with the industry’s ad spend trajectory, and navigate today’s unpredictable market.
 
General Health and Dietary Concerns
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the COVID-19 pandemic got many of us to pay more attention to our health. This has a significant impact on food and beverage brands, as consumers are thinking about how to take better care of themselves via their diets.
 
There are myriad bite-sized trends inside the larger “health” trajectory, including:
   –  60% of Americans live with someone whose disease is managed through diet, representing $268 billion in annual grocery sales
   –  Global sales of “functional foods and drinks” increased $18 billion to $292 billion in 2021
   –   An increase in “flexitarianism” (flexing between full vegan and vegetarian diets while allowing oneself to enjoy animal products once in a while)
       is keeping plant-based meats and alt-proteins out of the red
   –  Don’t forget about growing consumer interest in sustainability, limited processing, and local sourcing
 
All in all, the industry has plenty of lanes to swim in to meet consumers’ health demands!
Marketers in food and beverage can take this opportunity to toot their own horns in their advertising and product packaging. Maintaining presence, relevance, and helpfulness in a conscious consumer’s journey is key, and following up with advertising to close the sales loop can help put your healthiest options in their fridges and pantries.
 
FOMO for LTO
The perception of “scarcity” is one of those trusty marketing tactics that generates sales because it plays into people’s fear of missing out—or, as we’ve come to know it, FOMO. From hybrid foods to celebrity-curated meals, limited-time offers (or LTOs) are re-energizing brands and causing curious consumers to spend before the chance slips through their fingers.
The combo of limited-time menu items and influencer marketing has been on display on fast-food menus for a while now: McDonald’s Travis Scott combo boosted declining US sales at the Golden Arches in 2020 and inspired more partnerships like Justin Bieber and Tim Hortons, Megan Thee Stallion and Popeye’s, and Charli D’Amelio and Dunkin’. These quick-service restaurants see their marketing amplified by social media word of mouth, and they benefit when customers download mobile apps that make ordering and paying faster and in-app communications possible.
 
Even if these ambitious moves aren’t in your meal plan, food and bev brands have plenty of ways to generate excitement and/or curiosity—or even coordinate with product teams to create and introduce a limited-edition shock flavor—for a fun and buzzworthy way to showcase your brand and boost sales.