November 1, 2012
Feeding the Loners
Ironically heralding it as a “hidden opportunity,” a new study from the Hartman Group reveals that eating alone is becoming one of those new normals.
The study found that 46 percent of adults report they typically eat meals alone, up from 44 percent in 2010. And over half of adult alone-eating occasions take place in the home.
The trends driving the rise:
- Households transitions post-World War II: Mothers joining the work force, single-parent households and technology such as television have all reduced the frequency of traditional, sit-down "family meals."
- Dining communally loses importance: The social benefits of eating together have gradually waned over the last 50 years. While the “family dinner” is rare, almost unheard of is workers and school children returning home midday for family lunches.
- Less time to consume foods: Many meals today are focused more around the “mechanics of eating and not the celebration of food occasions.” The study noted how pervasive eating at work desks has become. Mobile technology proliferation in recent years has led many to eat alone even in rooms with others.
- The snackification of meals: Americans eat any time of the day, often to bridge gaps between meals due to long work and commute times. Eating smaller meals more frequently is increasingly seen as healthier.
With many marketing to “iconic meals of the past,” an opportunity to target eating alone occasions is being missed, particularly addressing two “pitfalls” of eating alone. The first is that people eating solo, without others around to help gauge proper portions, tend to eat too much. People also often develop “introspective nutritional fixations” without conversational distraction during mealtimes.
Significant opportunities were seen to exist developing single-portion-oriented baked, prepared and refrigerated stations that enable shoppers assembling meals-for-one to mix and match new tastes and cuisines. Whole Foods’ and Wegmans’ prepared foods sections were cited as examples.
While eating alone more, consumers are still “seeking ways in which to celebrate it” opening up opportunities to customize and personalize those eating occasions. Wrote Hartman, “Food to go, portable foods and premium “snacks” all can be crafted together to form a meal for one.”
With Trader Joe’s salad kits or Sabra Hummus singles cited as examples, packaging can also “shift solitary dining from a lonely occasion to something fun by serving as an interactive and pleasurable distraction.”
At retail, deli food stations such as olive bars can lift the shopping experience for those looking for baby splurges in shopping for themselves. The study states, “As they eat alone, consumers increasingly aggregate snack items to become a meal – thereby underscoring just how much eating styles have changed."
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Discussion Questions
Are grocers shortchanging the market opportunity targeting eating alone occasions? Which suggestions mentioned in the article for tapping the opportunity offer the most potential? Which other recommendations would you add?
Poll
The key to grocer’s being able to maximize this opportunity is to understand more about their shopper’s attitudes and desires around eating alone and making meals from a variety of snack-sized options. I, for one, would want some advice about how to combine for nutrition and calorie balance, so as NOT to over-indulge in foods with no labeling. But others may prefer advice on “taste palates” such as Asian, Spanish, etc. And I’m guessing kid-friendly on-the-go meal ideas for eating before or after sports on the weeknights would be big hit.
This is an opportunity that smaller retailers will be able to capitalize on more readily than big mainstream supermarkets. But it would be nice to see a section merchandised around solo eating occasions. Some retailers are shopper-centric enough to try this, and they could earn significant shopper love and trust by testing and learning to get it right!
Eating alone is extremely common in today’s world, and that’s why supermarkets and even mass merchandisers and drug stores are selling more “individual” foods wrapped and designed for single use. This is also why fast food is thriving in many more types of genres than even five and ten years ago, and why most supermarkets have more than just salad to sell on their food bars.
I’ve rarely met anyone who wanted to “celebrate” eating alone. Most folks just want to eat.
Where has the Hartman group been? Households of one were the fastest growing domestic demographic since … well … Bowling Alone was a best seller.
I have no idea what “introspective nutritional fixations” means in English — assuming it does mean something — but I’m not sure I see it as an opportunity for grocers.
The fallacy in this article reminds me of the flaw in the now ancient “Home Meal Replacement” (HMR) theory.
For those RetailWireds too young to remember this brilliant piece of marketing, the HMR argument went something like this: “Gosh, folks are eating out too much! Let’s give them pre-assembled ingredient kits of food they can finish cooking at home so they won’t have to waste valuable time shopping.”
Great theory EXCEPT the problem wasn’t that people didn’t have “sufficient optionality” — you have to love marketing language — when it came to cooking dinner. Rather, it was that they didn’t want to cook — anything — ergo, the success of prepared foods-to-go sections in supermarkets. If the supermarket could become another fast food outlet, it could compete for fast food customers.
In the early days of HMR there was a lot of half-baked psycho-babble about women NEEDING to find personal meaning, fulfillment and self esteem through feeling that they were actively and guilt-freely engaged in preparing meals for their families after a hard day being neurosurgeons or lawyers. Perish the thought that somebody might not need to be a homemaker to feel good about themselves!
I don’t know about you, but I smell the same kind of faux-Freudian folly mucking up this discussion. People who routinely eat alone probably don’t cook that much for themselves. And, if they do, they probably have figured out how to buy smaller portions all on their own.
As to recommendations, here’s one: How about not over thinking customer segmentation to the point of absurdity or advancing theories based on their novelty rather than their merit? It’s an idea that might not get you as much ink, but I’ll bet it will sell more groceries.
Great article. It’s missing one critical aspect of the story though…
More Americans are eating alone becuase more Americans ARE alone. In fact, almost 50% percent of Americans are single. That’s up from 28% in 1960. What’s more, 60% of those who say they are single actually live on their own. That’s roughly 100 million Americans who eat alone regularly. Now, match this up against the percentage of food items in your local grocery store that are single-serving. Check out how many prepared grocery store items are suitable for one person.
Unfortunately most grocery stores and food manufacturers are still seeing the world through 1960s glasses. We’ve built the retail world for families and in fact punish singles with higher costs, higher taxes and by forcing them to over-buy on most items.
It’s a HUGE opportunity for retailers and grocers in particular. Frankly, it’s astonishing that more aren’t awakening to it. The problem is, the grocery industry is intoxicated with volume and bulk. Someone needs to have the courage to break the price/volume paradigm and win the single shopper in numbers.
I would like to see a global study on this. These US results are very skewed versus a worldwide view. Nevertheless, the US culture dictates that CPG and retail food stores need to acknowledge this growing trend with meal solutions that cater to this lifestyle.
The challenge is that fewer people here can take the time or even care about their meals being “fun”, as the article suggests. I think packaging convenience, in every aspect, is key here for brands & retailers to capture and build lifetime consumer relationships.
There are indeed many factors driving the erosion of the traditional dinner model (Mom buys, prepares, and sets out a well-rounded meal, family sits down promptly at 6 for a meal and conversation). This creates a huge opportunity for food retailers, particularly in prepared foods. It is, essentially, grocers moving into the restaurant business, which is a lot easier to talk about than it is to execute, particularly on a large scale. It brings in elements of food safety, new organizational and management requirements, and incredibly tough margin challenges that most grocers do not face today. The biggest challenge is doing this consistently across multiple locations. Put simply, it is a lot easier to keep canned goods in stock than to make money on prepared foods.
A very big opportunity with very big hurdles.
The more a retailer focuses on eating alone occasions the greater he/she recognizes that “family” times have changed and have become splintered. Are they short changing the market opportunity in eating alone? Who is really qualified to say unless they are fully embracing the comfortable past, the more personalized present and the more daunting future?
The alienation of past eating mores makes me wonder if many food retailers fit into the mode of comprise by A. E. Housman, who once wrote: “I, a strange and afraid – In a world I never made.” And so uncertain retailers tend to continuing doing things that they learned so well in the past.
I would recommend in fast-paced environments that retailers strongly add eating alone features to their widening assortments. But they should also remember that the current evolution is not a guaranteed constant position; that new arrivals are still highly family oriented. Hey! Let’s include everybody’s preferential pallets in our business model.
Doug, you hit my nail right on the head. Most people who eat alone ARE alone. I have a good friend who recently lost his wife after a long illness. He has eaten three meals a day out for months and mostly alone. This is the growing trend. More than families on different schedules.
One is no longer the loneliest number when it comes to meals. Even in households with multiple people, schedules often preclude sitting down in a group for a meal occasion. In some cases this means looking for a single serving meal as described in the article – in others it means opening the fridge and looking for leftovers.
There are already many single meal solutions available in the local supermarket whether they are in the frozen food aisle or at the deli. Are there opportunities for more – certainly, but will consumer be willing to buy them in sufficient quantities to make this a viable offering is as yet unknown. As Mr. Mathews points out many of the people eating alone may not want to cook a meal but just grab something to eat.
There has been a rise in single family households over the age of 55 and during the ages of 18-27. In addition, there has been a rise of family members eating dinner at different times so they eat individually. This is not a “single diner” market. This is different groups of people eating alone and these groups have existed for some time. Smart companies that know their consumers already know this and have adapted. The rest of the companies should catch up but need to be smart about their consumers and their needs.
Smaller individual sized portions are a great opportunity, plus they are healthier! This doesn’t mean that our snacking habits will change, or that we won’t be eating other foods along with our individual sized meals.
Eating alone is not the only case for creating fresh single-serving meal solutions. There are cases where one partner is on a diet and another partner wants to increase their calories for a sporting event. So both need to eat differently.
I always thought the preparers of sushi bento boxes offered at grocers recognized this opportunity.
Superficially, the answers to this are 1) yes, it’s a large (and often underserved) market, and 2) grocers need to “do more” (i.e. small/single serving prepared and frozen entrees). But as I indicated, this is a superficial answer, and the “do more” criticism overlooks logistics issues such as 1) SKU “rationalization”: are stores which already have too many brands/sizes to add even more? 2) Cost: many retailers have reduced unit costs simply by increasing package size…is this trend to be reversed, and if so how will lower-income singles afford the higher prices that will likely result? (Of course it’s an even bigger issue if people are forced to overbuy and throw things out, but the challenge will be to think outside the box — literally — and achieve the savings with smaller sizes.)
This trend has been going on for a while now and not enough retailers are capitalizing on it. And they don’t have to make eating alone the focus, with its images of loneliness. The focus can be on meals for one or two under the guise of “smaller households” or “treating yourself”. An agency I was at a couple of years ago put together a shopper marketing program with this theme for a client of ours and they tried to sell it in to a well-known, more upscale grocery chain. Had all the stats that showed that quite a large percentage of their own shoppers were smaller 1 – 2 person households. But with the focus on increasing basket ring vs. meeting the shoppers’ needs it was passed over for another concept we presented.
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The key to grocer’s being able to maximize this opportunity is to understand more about their shopper’s attitudes and desires around eating alone and making meals from a variety of snack-sized options. I, for one, would want some advice about how to combine for nutrition and calorie balance, so as NOT to over-indulge in foods with no labeling. But others may prefer advice on “taste palates” such as Asian, Spanish, etc. And I’m guessing kid-friendly on-the-go meal ideas for eating before or after sports on the weeknights would be big hit.
This is an opportunity that smaller retailers will be able to capitalize on more readily than big mainstream supermarkets. But it would be nice to see a section merchandised around solo eating occasions. Some retailers are shopper-centric enough to try this, and they could earn significant shopper love and trust by testing and learning to get it right!
Eating alone is extremely common in today’s world, and that’s why supermarkets and even mass merchandisers and drug stores are selling more “individual” foods wrapped and designed for single use. This is also why fast food is thriving in many more types of genres than even five and ten years ago, and why most supermarkets have more than just salad to sell on their food bars.
I’ve rarely met anyone who wanted to “celebrate” eating alone. Most folks just want to eat.
Where has the Hartman group been? Households of one were the fastest growing domestic demographic since … well … Bowling Alone was a best seller.
I have no idea what “introspective nutritional fixations” means in English — assuming it does mean something — but I’m not sure I see it as an opportunity for grocers.
The fallacy in this article reminds me of the flaw in the now ancient “Home Meal Replacement” (HMR) theory.
For those RetailWireds too young to remember this brilliant piece of marketing, the HMR argument went something like this: “Gosh, folks are eating out too much! Let’s give them pre-assembled ingredient kits of food they can finish cooking at home so they won’t have to waste valuable time shopping.”
Great theory EXCEPT the problem wasn’t that people didn’t have “sufficient optionality” — you have to love marketing language — when it came to cooking dinner. Rather, it was that they didn’t want to cook — anything — ergo, the success of prepared foods-to-go sections in supermarkets. If the supermarket could become another fast food outlet, it could compete for fast food customers.
In the early days of HMR there was a lot of half-baked psycho-babble about women NEEDING to find personal meaning, fulfillment and self esteem through feeling that they were actively and guilt-freely engaged in preparing meals for their families after a hard day being neurosurgeons or lawyers. Perish the thought that somebody might not need to be a homemaker to feel good about themselves!
I don’t know about you, but I smell the same kind of faux-Freudian folly mucking up this discussion. People who routinely eat alone probably don’t cook that much for themselves. And, if they do, they probably have figured out how to buy smaller portions all on their own.
As to recommendations, here’s one: How about not over thinking customer segmentation to the point of absurdity or advancing theories based on their novelty rather than their merit? It’s an idea that might not get you as much ink, but I’ll bet it will sell more groceries.
Great article. It’s missing one critical aspect of the story though…
More Americans are eating alone becuase more Americans ARE alone. In fact, almost 50% percent of Americans are single. That’s up from 28% in 1960. What’s more, 60% of those who say they are single actually live on their own. That’s roughly 100 million Americans who eat alone regularly. Now, match this up against the percentage of food items in your local grocery store that are single-serving. Check out how many prepared grocery store items are suitable for one person.
Unfortunately most grocery stores and food manufacturers are still seeing the world through 1960s glasses. We’ve built the retail world for families and in fact punish singles with higher costs, higher taxes and by forcing them to over-buy on most items.
It’s a HUGE opportunity for retailers and grocers in particular. Frankly, it’s astonishing that more aren’t awakening to it. The problem is, the grocery industry is intoxicated with volume and bulk. Someone needs to have the courage to break the price/volume paradigm and win the single shopper in numbers.
I would like to see a global study on this. These US results are very skewed versus a worldwide view. Nevertheless, the US culture dictates that CPG and retail food stores need to acknowledge this growing trend with meal solutions that cater to this lifestyle.
The challenge is that fewer people here can take the time or even care about their meals being “fun”, as the article suggests. I think packaging convenience, in every aspect, is key here for brands & retailers to capture and build lifetime consumer relationships.
There are indeed many factors driving the erosion of the traditional dinner model (Mom buys, prepares, and sets out a well-rounded meal, family sits down promptly at 6 for a meal and conversation). This creates a huge opportunity for food retailers, particularly in prepared foods. It is, essentially, grocers moving into the restaurant business, which is a lot easier to talk about than it is to execute, particularly on a large scale. It brings in elements of food safety, new organizational and management requirements, and incredibly tough margin challenges that most grocers do not face today. The biggest challenge is doing this consistently across multiple locations. Put simply, it is a lot easier to keep canned goods in stock than to make money on prepared foods.
A very big opportunity with very big hurdles.
The more a retailer focuses on eating alone occasions the greater he/she recognizes that “family” times have changed and have become splintered. Are they short changing the market opportunity in eating alone? Who is really qualified to say unless they are fully embracing the comfortable past, the more personalized present and the more daunting future?
The alienation of past eating mores makes me wonder if many food retailers fit into the mode of comprise by A. E. Housman, who once wrote: “I, a strange and afraid – In a world I never made.” And so uncertain retailers tend to continuing doing things that they learned so well in the past.
I would recommend in fast-paced environments that retailers strongly add eating alone features to their widening assortments. But they should also remember that the current evolution is not a guaranteed constant position; that new arrivals are still highly family oriented. Hey! Let’s include everybody’s preferential pallets in our business model.
Doug, you hit my nail right on the head. Most people who eat alone ARE alone. I have a good friend who recently lost his wife after a long illness. He has eaten three meals a day out for months and mostly alone. This is the growing trend. More than families on different schedules.
One is no longer the loneliest number when it comes to meals. Even in households with multiple people, schedules often preclude sitting down in a group for a meal occasion. In some cases this means looking for a single serving meal as described in the article – in others it means opening the fridge and looking for leftovers.
There are already many single meal solutions available in the local supermarket whether they are in the frozen food aisle or at the deli. Are there opportunities for more – certainly, but will consumer be willing to buy them in sufficient quantities to make this a viable offering is as yet unknown. As Mr. Mathews points out many of the people eating alone may not want to cook a meal but just grab something to eat.
There has been a rise in single family households over the age of 55 and during the ages of 18-27. In addition, there has been a rise of family members eating dinner at different times so they eat individually. This is not a “single diner” market. This is different groups of people eating alone and these groups have existed for some time. Smart companies that know their consumers already know this and have adapted. The rest of the companies should catch up but need to be smart about their consumers and their needs.
Smaller individual sized portions are a great opportunity, plus they are healthier! This doesn’t mean that our snacking habits will change, or that we won’t be eating other foods along with our individual sized meals.
Eating alone is not the only case for creating fresh single-serving meal solutions. There are cases where one partner is on a diet and another partner wants to increase their calories for a sporting event. So both need to eat differently.
I always thought the preparers of sushi bento boxes offered at grocers recognized this opportunity.
Superficially, the answers to this are 1) yes, it’s a large (and often underserved) market, and 2) grocers need to “do more” (i.e. small/single serving prepared and frozen entrees). But as I indicated, this is a superficial answer, and the “do more” criticism overlooks logistics issues such as 1) SKU “rationalization”: are stores which already have too many brands/sizes to add even more? 2) Cost: many retailers have reduced unit costs simply by increasing package size…is this trend to be reversed, and if so how will lower-income singles afford the higher prices that will likely result? (Of course it’s an even bigger issue if people are forced to overbuy and throw things out, but the challenge will be to think outside the box — literally — and achieve the savings with smaller sizes.)
This trend has been going on for a while now and not enough retailers are capitalizing on it. And they don’t have to make eating alone the focus, with its images of loneliness. The focus can be on meals for one or two under the guise of “smaller households” or “treating yourself”. An agency I was at a couple of years ago put together a shopper marketing program with this theme for a client of ours and they tried to sell it in to a well-known, more upscale grocery chain. Had all the stats that showed that quite a large percentage of their own shoppers were smaller 1 – 2 person households. But with the focus on increasing basket ring vs. meeting the shoppers’ needs it was passed over for another concept we presented.