Pret A Manger is making way for meal à la maison

THE lunch box is experiencing a modern-day renaissance as thousands of British workers attempt to outdo each other with “Instagramworthy” meals, researchers have revealed.

While the simple school sandwiches of yesteryear continue to fall from favour, a surge in adults striving to add vibrancy to their midday meal has seen Britons spend an additional £39million on upmarket ingredients in the last year.

The craze has been directed largely by online health trends, with the hashtags #lunch and #lunchbox receiving more than 53million hits on the social media site Instagram.

As consumers increasingly turn to fellow lunch packers for inspiration, preparation time has also jumped – with the average Briton now spending an additional 84 seconds finessing their creations.

The resurgence comes on the back of a prolonged slide for the lunch box, which suffered a steep decline in popularity following the introduction of universal free school meals in 2014.

With all five to nine-yearolds guaranteed a free meal, the new schools programme saw the number of primary schoolchildren eating homemade sandwiches halve within two years.

But this downturn is being offset by internet-conscious workers, who packed just shy of 2 billion lunches in the year to Feb 26 – only 2.9 per cent fewer than highs recorded prior to 2014.

According to analysts, millennials are the largest demographic behind the trend, with 81.3 per cent regularly ditching takeaway for quinoa or avocado.

Meanwhile, retailers have seen strong growth among lunch box consumers aged 34-54, who are also swapping Pret a Manger for lunch à la maison.

Adam Scott, Kantar analyst, told The Grocer magazine that the “negative impact” of free school meals had now been “negated”, with large bread, meat and savoury manufacturers producing new lines of products to cater to the emerging workforce market.