Millennials’ food habits reshaping industries
Millennials, those muchwritten-about people born after 1980, are, like the generations before them, molding the world around them. And that world includes the kitchen and grocery store.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture published a report last month titled “Food Purchase Decisions of Millennial Households Compared to Other Generations,” by researchers Annemarie Kuhns and Michelle Saksena. The report notes that millennials prefer prepared foods, make fewer trips to grocery stores and spend less money on meat than Generation X, the baby boomer crowd or even older Americans, dubbed traditionalists.
Millennials are the largest demographic group in the
U.S., surpassing even the baby boomers in size, and Kuhns and Saksena surmise that their habits will force stores, restaurants and other food providers to adapt, much as they have adapted to prior generations and societal shifts.
For example, Kuhns and Saksena found that millennials spend almost an hour less per week than Gen X members cooking and making meals.
“This observation supports the finding that millennials purchase more ready-toeat foods,” according to the researchers.
It also matches with a trend in the popularity of meal kits and restaurant delivery services and a boom in mobile and online ordering technology. Some of that could be attributed to familiarity: Millennials have mostly known a world in which convenience is king.
“As prepared foods have become more ubiquitous — in every location, from food trucks to bookstores to drugstores — this generation has become familiar with it,” said Tim Powell, vice president of consulting and a food-service analyst for Q1 Consulting. “I think their inclination to use mobile and delivery services is merely the effect of growing up during the information age.”
The lack of cooking in millennial households has not led to an uptick in restaurant visits. In fact, traffic at restaurants is stagnant. More and more, millennials prefer to eat at home, where they can stream shows on Netflix or Hulu.
“It is not that consumers don’t want to cook. They are looking for someone else to do the cooking for them,” said Bonnie Riggs, restaurant industry analyst for the NPD Group, in a recent report, “or to make it extremely easy for them to do so at home.
“The most popular place to eat out this year will be in the home.”
Some other takeaways from the USDA report are that millennials spend less of their food budget on meat than other generational groups do, and more of it on nuts, pasta and sweets. Millennials are also more likely to seek out dining experiences instead of the chains their parents frequent. They favor organic food and hot sauce.
Another oddity is that millennials are more likely to buy food at gas stations or convenience stores. That makes perfect sense to Powell.
“Millennials were either not alive, or grew up prior to, gas stations that offered week-old hot dogs and coffee on the burner for five straight days,” he said. “In their time, gas stations have evolved into fresh coffee and madeto-order sandwich shops.”
When Wawa, a popular Mid-Atlantic chain of convenience stores and gas pumps, opened in Washington, D.C., last month, a line of waiting customers was more than a block long.
That shift in viewpoint could also be a reason why millennials make fewer trips to traditional grocers, instead grabbing items at
convenience stores, Powell said.
Companies as diverse as Amazon, Kroger and Wendy’s see the changes coming and have been out in front of some of them.
Amazon delivered more than 5 billion packages last year. And sensing an opportunity to sell more food online, it bought Whole Foods last year.
Kroger is expanding its online ordering service and meal-kit offerings, has tested delivery services and is going to roll out a checkout-free option at 400 of its stores next year.
Wendy’s is working with DoorDash to offer delivery in thousands of its stores.
Previous generations have shown that people change as they age.
Kuhns and Saksena suggest that millennials probably will frequent grocers more as they form households and have children, and their diets will shift as they age and make more money. Yet, some of their habits, such as their affinity for technology and convenience, will only grow stronger.