Breakfast changes
In the wake of the response to Covid which saw lockdowns and outlet closures, and associated changes in demand and people’s out of home eating habits, there has been a merging of dayparts and new trends and developments shaping resurging breakfast and brunch demand. THE CASE FOR BETTER BREAKFASTS How does your day start? Do you take a more leisurely mid-morning breakfast? With both hot and cold breakfasts featuring in the Top 10 Food To Go product categories, and real changes in consumer behaviour emerging during Covid, you need to know the latest trends if you are going to capitalise on this key area of opportunity, advise sector analysts, mealtrak. In the spring of 2021, the government showed us the road out of lockdown plan, and we all started to feel a little brighter. However, the real road to recovery for businesses started much later with many city-based companies keeping work from home policies in place until October 2021 and beyond. The hybrid/flexible working model is now here to stay with 84% of managers reporting that their businesses have adopted hybrid working (mealtrak’s State of the Nation Report for 2021), and this new model is providing us with a chance to really think and consider our options for how we choose to experience life best, including our choice of eating experiences, feel the researchers. Pre-pandemic, mealtimes were traditionally set pretty much around the nine to five of a working week with weekends off. However, as lockdown was introduced, without the standard working day or week, one of the ways 46 I www.sandwichandfoodtogonews.co.uk
we were encouraged to cope with what was to be a long time working from home, was to stick to a routine and to start the day well. Breakfasts became a way of marking the this, to kick start a plan for the day. During lockdown, the resilience of fast food and takeaway being ahead of cold breakfasts. Although year on year at the end of December 2021, breakfasts were at -27% overall and porridge or oat based breakfasts performed the best in the hot breakfast category with hot cooked porridge at just -2%.
2021 versus 2022 sample comparison out of home eating breakdown (source mealtrak W99 Food to Go & Eating Out Home Report 2021 and 2022)
