Are Ready-To-Eat Meals The Future Of The FMCG Industry?
We cannot deny the fact that online grocery delivery service has made our lives easier like never before, no matter how hard we try. Today, we can place an order for groceries from a supermarket using a smartphone.
Heat-and-eat foods or meal kits are one step ahead of these grocery delivery service operators. All you have to do is pick up your smartphone, select from a wide range of pre-cooked meals and place your order for delivery or pick-up. While there are multiple options to choose from, only online stores offer a comparison chart, which helps bring down the overall bill that includes the grocery delivery charges, if any.
Keeping an eye on consumers’ demand for home delivery and convenience foods, here are some ways food brands and retailers can respond to as well as capitalize the market opportunities.
1. Ready to Eat vs From-scratch Cooking
Based on the data analyzed by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), over 53% of online shoppers ordered partially-cooked items for their dinner, whereas only 35% of people cook their meal from scratch.
The report also states that about 45% of shoppers buy poultry and meat that simply require a reheat before they are ready for consumption while about 40% order pre-cooked food that is ready to be served. Not only that, about 56% of people (adults) buy deli-prepared foods on a regular basis.
Based on this data, we can conclude that the younger generation demands convenience as compared to the elderly. About 30% of consumers below the age of 45 years prefer packaged foods and about 20% of consumers prefer frozen pasta or potatoes that simply need a microwave whirl before being served.
2. Increased Demand for Heat-and-Eat Kits
Today, supermarkets have more requirements to meet other than just selling groceries. The increasing demand for meal kits has paved a way to boost their revenue. The market size of these products has grown to $1.5 billion in the past 5 years and is expected to double over the next 5.
Some retailers in 4 stores across the Cincinnati area are testing the line of business of meal kits that include ingredients to prepare a meal in no more than 20 minutes. You can get creamy chicken, Moroccan spring veggies, and bacon alfredo for as low as $14 per kit.
3. Online Ordering is Picking Up the Pace
Now, think of home delivery of groceries. The increasing demand and supply for heat-and-eat meals is suppressing the demand for staple groceries while not affecting the demand for home delivery.
When it comes to ordering semi-cooked meals online, it clearly depicts the mindset of the customers that they either don’t want to spend much of their time cooking or have no idea how a meal is prepared.
While the average price of a made-from-scratch meal is way less than a meal kit, food brands won’t want their customers to reject their products just because they are expensive. Thus, they offer a complete range of meals at affordable to premium prices along with incessant marketing.
Conclusion!
Online grocery shopping enables you to scroll through various items without walking around the aisles or even leaving your home. And while ready-to-eat meals or heat-and-eat foods used to be a subject of scorn earlier, consumers today look for a variety of quick meals and it has become common for food brands to offer a wide range of heat-and-eat packaged foods.
The best thing about these meals is that they require minimal cooking — just put the meal into the microwave and heat it up as you like and they’re ready to go.
Author Bio
Sumit Narula is a Software Engineer by study, a Content Writer by choice, and a painter-cum-sketcher by passion. His professional stint at content writing started in 2011 and he writes for several domains, including business communication skills, personal finance, business loans, credit cards, and Entrepreneurship, etc.
