Frozen Food Meals Are on the Rise (I Called It Last Year)
I hate to say I told you so, but I made this prediction back in early April 2019. I mentioned that more and more people are going to be walking down the frozen food aisle and grabbing some frozen food meals and well… I was right. No, I didn’t have any insider knowledge and I’m not Nostradamus, I just had a feeling that there was going to be a resurgence of people who wanted quick, easy to prepare, and convenient meals.
Is everything in the frozen food aisle healthy that is flying off of the shelf? No. But none the less, people are changing their eating behaviors even more which is making frozen food meals more appealing.
The Numbers Speak for Themselves
Yesterday, I was snooping around on the internet when I saw an article that caught my eye from a Google search. The article was on frozen food. The article published by CNN Business mentioned that frozen foods are flying out of the grocery store freezers. According to the data, it mentioned that a study over the course of 11 weeks (ending May 16, 2020) showed a 40.2% increase in frozen food consumption when compared to the prior year. The total dollar amount was a staggering $15.5 billion according to the Nielsen data.
Of the food purchased was a surge in healthy food options – not the commonly assumed TV dinners we generally think about when talking about frozen food meals. This is quite interesting. It shows that Americans are looking for healthy alternatives and are actually putting forth an effort to eat better.
Interestingly enough, the data also showed that freezer sales from the same period increased by 195%. Consumers are packing their freezers with pre-packaged frozen food meals that are low-carb, low-fat, high-protein, gluten-free, and even meatless.
Why the Shift in Behavior?
For starters, in case you have been living in a cave and have no clue what’s going on in the world, this coronavirus is sweeping across the globe not once, but multiple times. People don’t know what to do. The numbers go down and then they go back up. Therefore, people are staying home and making food rather than ordering out in an effort to protect themselves. Yet, the one place many venture out and visit each week is the supermarket and grocery store.
People seem to be stockpiling frozen food meals and anything they can to stock up and have enough food on hand in case anything else happens and more things get shut down. We’ve already experienced food shortages across different food channels and people want to be able to not have to think about how they are going to eat if certain items go out of stock or prices rise due to these shortages.
Now, this entire shift in behavior isn’t simply because of the virus we are faced with. According to FoodProcessing.com, the shift happened well before any of this took place. They reported that from what the National Frozen & Refrigerated Food Association found that “the frozen food department in grocery stores grew $918 million in the 52 weeks ending June 29, 2019, with sales totaling $54.6 billion.”
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