Capitalizing On New Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner Consumption Patterns

Table of Contents

• CHAPTER 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
  • The hot topic
  • The future decoded
    • Time pressured consumers are prone to skipping main meals
    • Meals are increasingly consumed out-of-home
    • Consumers are increasingly eating lighter main meals
    • There are age and gender variances in the propensity to skip meals
    • Breakfasts are increasingly informal, lighter, and are important for consumers' overall wellbeing
    • Lunches are increasingly informal, lighter and consumed in a broader range of locations
    • Evening meals are increasingly diverse and contradictory in nature
    • Convenience and health-driven consumption is detracting from mealtime enjoyment
    • Health increasingly impacts all meal occasions
  • Action points
• CHAPTER 2 THE FUTURE DECODED
  • Introduction
  • TREND: Time pressured consumers are prone to skipping main meals
    • Europeans and North American consumers skip more than 15 per cent of breakfasts
      • Breakfast is more commonly skipped in Europe
    • Skipping lunch is most common in the US and is missed less often in Europe
    • Dinners are also being skipped more frequently
  • TREND: Meals are increasingly consumed out-of-home
    • Convenience is the biggest driver of out-of-home consumption
    • Breakfast is mostly consumed in-home, but out-of home growth is higher
    • Lunch is the most frequently consumed out-of-home meal
    • Most dinners are eaten in-home, though out-of-home growth is strong
  • TREND: Consumers are increasingly eating lighter main meals
    • Light meals are consumer defined but do share common characteristics
    • Convenience and health are driving the trend towards light meals
      • Light meal consumption can be associated with grazing throughout the day
    • Light meal consumption is highest at breakfast and lunch
    • Consumers are also increasingly eating light meals in-between main meals
      • There is a trend towards "light meal snack occasions"
    • New and emerging occasions exist in light of dissolving dayparts
  • INSIGHT: There are age and gender variances in the propensity to skip meals
    • Young adults and early mid-lifers are most prone to skipping main meals
      • Consumers aged 14-34 skip over 100 breakfasts per year in many countries
    • Males are more likely to skip meals than females
      • Ethnicity also affects propensity to skip breakfast
  • INSIGHT: Breakfasts are increasingly informal, lighter, and are important for consumers' overall wellbeing
    • The majority of breakfasts are still eaten at-home
    • Breakfasts are increasingly characterized by speed and informality
      • The growth of cereal bars reflects the trend towards convenience
    • Cereal remains a popular, convenient choice
    • Breakfast is increasingly defined as light by consumers
    • Skipping meals, especially breakfast has a negative affect on performance and other broader lifestyle factors
      • Eating breakfast is associated better overall daily nutritient intake
      • Breakfast is associated with better physical performance and general healthier behaviors
      • Eating breakfast helps individuals maintain a healthy weight
      • Skipping meals leads to a spike in insulin levels
  • INSIGHT: Lunches are increasingly informal, lighter and consumed in a broad range of locations
    • Lunch is typically consumed away-from-home
    • Lunch occasions are increasingly informal
    • Lunch is when consumers are most likely to eat a light meal
  • INSIGHT: Evening meals are increasingly diverse and contradictory in nature
    • Consumers are keen to simplify the meal preparation and consumption process
      • Work-life balance problems impact consumer lifestyles, including meal habits
      • Mealtime preparation is one of the major lifestyle activities affected by lack of time and work-life balance problems
      • Preparation and consumption time is typically kept to a minimum
    • Time pressed consumers turn to prepared meals in the evening
      • Mealtime informality reflects the growth of prepared meals
      • Making prepared meals healthier and enhancing sensory appeal will boost usage occasions further
      • Bulk-buying of dinners is a new phenomenon that is taking the US by storm
    • Dinners are becoming lighter
    • There has been a conscious effort to re-prioritize evening meals
      • The evening meal is when parents want to facilitate proper family time
      • Consumers are seeking to improve their work-life balance
      • Preparing a home-cooked meal is still considred important, even if consumers are doing it less
  • INSIGHT: Convenience and health driven consumption is detracting from mealtime enjoyment
    • Excitement and enjoyment are vital factors influencing mealtime consumption choices
    • Consumers are not always excited by their mealtime choices making them disengaged shoppers
      • Those who enjoy cooking are also those who enjoy eating
  • INSIGHT: Health increasingly impacts all meal occasions
    • Pursuing a better diet is equated with better mental and physical wellbeing
    • Consumers are reporting a growing propensity to eat healthily
    • Consumers report difficulties eating healthily away from home
      • There is a strong need emerging for healthy and convenient meal solutions
      • Consumers struggle to satisfy their needs for healthy and convenient food solutions when out-of-home
    • A broad range of nutritional concerns characterize today's consumers
    • Consumers are seeking more information on healthy eating
  • Conclusion
• CHAPTER 3 ACTION POINTS
  • Introduction
  • ACTION: Target the health and wellness trend in mealtime consumption
    • Create "better for you products" with a focus on what's added and what's removed
    • Clearly communicate 'better for you' product development techniques in order to (re)gain consumer trust
    • Educate consumers against the pitfalls of skipping meals, especially breakfast
      • Bring breakfast into consumers' consciousness
    • Make health a key focal point with future prepared meal innovations
    • Become an information resource for healthy living
      • Embrace interactive online content in a more creative way
    • Satisfy the unfulfilled demand for healthy and convenient food
    • Extend brands with already established health credentials
  • ACTION: Seek to bring the enjoyment factor back into food preparation and consumption
    • Consider how to get consumers more engaged in the meal preparation process
      • Encourage experimentation by using celebrity chefs and 'persuasive advertising'
      • Use sampling campaigns to alleviate consumers quality concerns
    • Embrace sensory and experiential marketing
      • Bring brands to life through campaigns that offer "branded experiences"
      • Focus on sensory attributes to bring products into consumers' consciousness
    • Leverage the authentic credentials of products and brands
      • Provide consumers with detailed stories about brands and food preparation
      • Develop product ranges that are based on traditional/local cooking methods
      • Draw more attention to authentic ethnic offerings
    • Re-align products to reflect changing perceptions of luxury
    • Target consumers desire to replicate out-of-home dining quality when at-home
  • ACTION: Offer a broad range of product solutions across the meal preparation spectrum
    • Develop full meal kits to tempt convenience gourmets
    • Become an information resource and campaigner for improved family time
      • Show understanding and sensitivity to consumers' problems of making time for sit-down family meals
    • Target the desire to experience "real meals"
      • Help parents become more involved in the meal preparation process
      • Use 'home-cooked' or 'slow-cooked' ideology when marketing future prepared meal solutions
  • ACTION: Target the trend towards lighter main meals
    • Primarily target females for lighter and healthier breakfast, lunch and dinner options
      • Males can be targeted with more substantive fills for between meal consumption
    • Develop 'flexibly positioned' products ban be positioned across dayparts
      • Target consumers' tendancy to see food products as 'all day consumables'
    • Seek to legitimize 'flexi-eating' habits to generate extra consumption occasions
  • ACTION: Offer convenient out-of-home solutions
    • Develop product formats more suitable for on-the-go eating
    • Explore new foodservice concepts
      • There may even be opportunities for a CPG branded foodservice offering
  • ACTION: Show awareness of changing demographics
    • Adopt the principles of ageless marketing into targeting strategies
    • Develop products that target smaller household sizes
• CHAPTER 4 APPENDIX
  • Definitions
  • Research methodology
  • Future readings
  • How to contact experts in your industry
  • List of Tables
    • Table 1: Number of missed breakfast occasions per person per year, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 2: Number of missed lunch occasions per person per year, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 3: Number of missed dinner occasions per person per year, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 4: The number of in-home breakfasts versus out-of-home breakfasts, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 5: The value of in-home breakfasts versus out-of home breakfasts (US$ billions), by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 6: The number of in-home lunches versus out-of-home lunches, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 7: The value of in-home lunches versus out-of home lunches, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 8: The number of in-home dinners versus out-of-home dinners, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 9: The value of in-home dinners versus out-of home dinners, by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 10: Number of light breakfast occasions (overall per person per year), by country, 205-2010
    • Table 11: Number of light lunch occasions (overall per person per year), by country, 205-2010
    • Table 12: Number of light dinner occasions (overall per person per year), by country, 205-2010
    • Table 13: Number of light meal occasions (overall and per person per year), by country, 2005-2010
    • Table 14: The number of missed breakfasts per person per year, by age and country, 2005
    • Table 15: The number of missed lunches per person per year, by age and country, 2005
    • Table 16: The number of missed dinners per person per year, by age and country, 2005-2010
    • Table 17: The number of missed dinners per person per year, by gender and country, 2005
    • Table 18: Overall and per person per year number of breakfast occasions in the UK, Europe and the US, by location, 2005-2010
    • Table 19: Average time taken by consumers to prepare meals by daypart, US and Europe, 2004
    • Table 20: Per capita expenditure on cereal bars (US$/head), by country, 2000-2010
    • Table 21: Per capita expenditures on breakfast cereals (hot and ready-to-eat), (US$/head) by country 2000-2010
    • Table 22: The number of light breakfast occasions, by age, gender and country, 2005
    • Table 23: Overall and per person per year number of lunch occasions in the UK, Europe and the US, by location, 2005-2010
    • Table 24: The number of light lunch occasions per year, by age, gender and country, 2005-2010
    • Table 25: Consumer survey: frequency of preparing a quick-and-easy and 'restaurant-style gourmet meal' at home, by country, 2006
    • Table 26: Total and per capita ready meal market value (US$bn) and (US$), by country, 2000-2010
    • Table 27: The number of light dinner occasions, by age, gender and country, 2005-2010
    • Table 28: Consumer survey: the importance that European and US consumers place on a number of health related dietary approaches, 2006
    • Table 29: The level of trust consumers have in various claims made by packaged goods manufacturers, by country
    • Table 30: Convenience-product attributes to instill in offerings
    • Table 31: Average number of individuals per house, by country, 2000-2010
    • Table 32: Definitions of product categories
    • Table 33: Definitions of consumption occasions
    • Table 34: Definitions of other terms
  • List of Figures
    • Figure 1: Consumer mega-trends continue to impact eating habits
    • Figure 2: Consumers are increasingly prone to skipping meals
    • Figure 3: Skipping breakfast is least common in Spain, but these countries are experiencing the biggest change
    • Figure 4: US consumers are far more likely than Europeans to skip lunch
    • Figure 5: A typical European and American consumer both skipped less than 20 evening meals in 2005
    • Figure 6: There are numerous ways the industry can respond to the increasing propensity to consume away-from-home
    • Figure 7: A light meal has traits of a snack and traits of a core meal
    • Figure 8: Convenience and health are the fundamental drivers of the light meal trend which is impacting all mealtime occasions
    • Figure 9: Light meal consumption is highest at breakfast and lunch
    • Figure 10: Consumers aged 14-34 are most likely to skip a main meal
    • Figure 11: Males are more likely to skip breakfast, lunch or dinner, although consumers of both genders do so frequently
    • Figure 12: Consumers are torn between a need for convenient foods and a desire to spend more time preparing a home cooked meal
    • Figure 13: Time saving products are highly valuable commodities to consumers seeking to redress work-life balance conflicts
    • Figure 14: Growth in ready meals will remain strong in Europe, but is stabilizing in the US
    • Figure 15: Bulk buying dinner schemes are gaining popularity in the US and are indicative of consumers desire for convenience solutions for meal preparation chores
    • Figure 16: Consumers across Europe and the US still attach a high degree of importance on preparing a home cooked household meal
    • Figure 17: Those who enjoy cooking are also those who enjoy eating
    • Figure 18: A lack of nutritious foods available out-of-home make healthy eating patterns difficult to sustain
    • Figure 19: Health-orientated consumers are now placing emphasis on a broader range of factors
    • Figure 20: To capitalize on the health and wellness trend manufacturers must also embrace the idea of 'positive nutrition'
    • Figure 21: Developing 'less bad' meal solutions is the minimum manufactures should do to target healthy meal demand
    • Figure 22: Marketing initiatives can help bring breakfast or any other mealtime occasion back into consumers' consciousness
    • Figure 23: Demonstrating the evidence behind why breakfast is important requires a delicate communication message
    • Figure 24: Factors that discourage consumers from purchasing prepared meals, based on consumer and industry opinion surveys, 2005
    • Figure 25: To bring the enjoyment factor back into mealtime consumption manufacturers need to persuasively suggest newer and exciting ways of preparing and consuming meals
    • Figure 26: The different levels of experiential marketing can be used to capitalize on the sensory mega-trend
    • Figure 27: With more mass market consumers showing a willingness to trade up brands risk getting 'stuck in the middle'
    • Figure 28: Manufacturers need to respond to consumers' growing expectations at-home fueled by increased dining out
    • Figure 29: Complete meal kits offer a number of benefits to consumers
    • Figure 30: Communication cues such as 'slow-cooked' and 'home-made' can help prepared meals seem more authentic
    • Figure 31: More filling savory products are well suited to meet male consumers' need for light meal between breakfast, lunch and dinner occasions
    • Figure 32: By targeting the light meals trend manufacturers can simultaneously align products with core mealtimes occasions and in-between meal snack occasions
    • Figure 33: Through simple re-formatting, products can become much more suitable for out-of-home consumption
    • Figure 34: There are more opportunities to target consumers with convenient meal solution out-of-home
    • Figure 35: Develop products that target smaller household sizes will be increasingly important in the next 10 years