MARKET RESEARCH
What now for the pizza and Italian food market? Pizza and Italian foods are a long-established food favourite for Brits who have purchased from outlets and eaten them in restaurants on a regular basis for many years now. Pizza and pasta/Italian food were the number two category for eating out of home, after British, prepandemic, observe sector analysts, MealTrak, but what now? HAS THE PANDEMIC CHANGED THAT OUTLOOK? At MealTrak, we tracked the changes in consumption trends for food to go and eating out throughout the pandemic. We could understand very quickly, the mindset of the consumer by tracking changes with our continuous data throughout. This has been an invaluable tool to our clients and enabled them to react and evolve their propositions to reflect the changes in needs of their consumers. We will take a look at the pizza and pasta market from a couple of viewpoints to give a rounded assessment of Eating Out (restaurants), Food on the Go (takeaways/QSR) and Delivered. EATING OUT (RESTAURANTS/PUBS) As we all know, this sector was one of the most significantly impacted by the effects of restrictions. This is reflected most vividly when looking at the number of occasions when a cuisine was consumed in the past 12 months and shows they are currently at -64%, but this has been steadily improving over the summer. In April, the 12 month number was -80%. The improvement is most markedly seen in the latest 12 weeks vs the same period last year and shows there have been +26% more occasions. When the data is broken down the individual key cuisine Italian food has experienced a slightly lower level of decline and is bouncing back quicker. The difference for 52 weeks, year on year was -60%. However, looking at the statistics for the YOY comparison of the 12 week period, there is a marked positive note; a difference of +24%. This is an impressive 84 percentage points in the right direction! (source MealTrak Wave 91 to August 9th, 2021). The data demonstrates that there is a level of confidence being restored in eating out and, at first glance, this appears
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to be an extremely positive step. It is certainly a positive move towards a more sustainable category, but is it as it could be? There have been some significant jumps to recovery for some cuisines, Lebanese being the most impressive bounce 12 weeks YOY but this is from a low base figure. Italian cuisine is still the strongest international category at a value of £637m Year to 9th August 2021. The next nearest international cuisine is American/Tex Mex, but at a value of £185m Year to 9th August 2021, it’s considerably lower than Italian. Other positive bounces, but still not achieving the overall value of Italian are Thai, Vietnamese and South American – all of which have ingredients which are, perhaps, unfamiliar to the British cooking population. CAPITALISING ON TRENDING MISSIONS IN EATING OUT Understanding the customer’s reason to purchase through their missions and needs is a powerful indicator for menu or product development. It’s more than just what’s been purchased…it’s that in-depth reasoning behind the consumption of food – the what, why, how, where and who by of consumption. Two of the key missions identified throughout lockdown was the need to “treat” and to satisfy a “craving”. With so many furloughed, the home baking and cooking wave exploded. We all remember the flour and yeast shortage as the UK decided, almost en masse, to bake bread, many for the first time ever! But those who understood this mindset, realised that not everything would be easy to cook or make from scratch. The real winners throughout lockdown were those that were able to provide a real point of difference – something creative, satisfying and unfamiliar that would be a real treat to eat and possibly a little complicated to reproduce at home. October 2021
