The first lockdown in March 2020 saw huge societal changes which impacted on every aspect of our lives, and none more so than our eating behaviour.
The 30% of our spend eating out of home shifted to the mainstream retailers. The daily shop disappeared with frequency decreasing not just to weekly but within a few weeks to monthly as individuals looked to keep their excursions from home to a minimum.
Consumers became intent on stocking up and shopping less frequently and the resulting increased single-transaction spend on bigger shops saw us become more cost conscious and frugal – to the extent that the supermarkets culled numerous smaller brands and increased their stockholding of mainstream products, as a significant drop in the household budget for many translated into reduced purchasing of both premium and luxury products.
And a big winner of this change was the frozen category which saw sales rocket by 30% as shoppers looked beyond the fridge and store cupboard to the convenience and practicality of the freezer.
But what about online? Before lockdown it only accounted for 7% of supermarket shopping but this increased to around 10%.
At the same time, the switch from eating and drinking out of home saw UK alcohol sales within retailing increase 117% by volume in April 2020 alone.
With the majority of us spending most of our time at home and less able to eat out with the closure of cafes and restaurants, there was a significant increase in the preparation of meals at home with a big surge in scratch cooking too.
But how much of this behaviour change has remained intact?
Within the first 6 months of COVID-19, research from The Grocer found that one in five people had spent time improving their culinary skills. Many of these individuals were also learning to cook different cuisines as they sought to replicate the breadth of dining options that had been available to them in the pre-pandemic world.
With many individuals not only discovering they could cook but with 40% surveyed stating they were enjoying it too, it has been the casual dining sector which has continued to suffer most as cost and quality comparisons continue to be made with consumers raising the bar in terms of their quality and value for money expectations. And 72% of all UK eating occasions now take place at home compared to 60% prior to lockdown.
This rise means that nearly 75% of all meals consumed in the UK are home cooked, equivalent to an estimated 500 million additional meals.
And with huge swathes of the population no longer commuting to cities and the growth in hybrid working, urban coffee shops and food to go eateries have also experienced a reduction in trade as spend has switched to the places where people now live and work – dormitory towns becoming a thing of the past with local the new urban.
Indeed, in a research study undertaken by the Food Standards Agency with over 10,000 respondents, of those who cooked more during the pandemic, 82% expected this change to continue and of those who had eaten more meals with their family at home, 79% expected this new behaviour to continue.
Food delivery also rose considerably during lockdown as dining in became the new dining out. And by the second year of the pandemic, delivered and takeaway sales had increased by 130%.
But we’re not just eating our meals at home more often, we are getting friends and family over for dinner instead of dining out with the FSA survey indicating that 25% of people plan to have more dinner parties than they did pre-pandemic.
In terms of our food shopping behaviour, the big winners here have been short-cut prep ingredients along with quality sauces and cooking ingredients, satisfying a growing demand from home cooks to recreate meals they previously bought when dining out.
And as mentioned earlier, the frozen category continues to boom as consumers increasingly like the convenience, reduced waste and often better value for money combined with time saving solutions.
But what about health? COVID certainly raised consciousness of our individual vulnerability and whilst mass-mortality has become a distant, intangible threat, the precarious aspect of our health became much more front of mind and as a consequence our overall focus on eating healthily has increased significantly, as found in the FSA study.
So will eating out bounce back to pre-COVID levels?
It seems unlikely given that so many consumers have discovered the joys of cooking, dining and entertaining at home so 2024 is set to be an interesting year for food and drinks businesses which focus on bringing practical, time saving, healthy and exciting, ingredient solutions to market.