The ‘most important meal of the day’ makes a comeback
There is little question that the ongoing recession has reshaped consumer habits. With more families eating more meals at home, such categories as breakfast foods have seen a resurgence in recent years.
And at the heart of it all is the ready-to-eat cereal category, which generates nearly 54% of sales of all breakfast foods. While a combination of discounting and tough year-over-year comparisons show the category down more than 2% from its peak at the beginning of the economic downturn, ready-to-eat cereal generated more than 12 shopping trips, according to mid-year 2010 data from the Nielsen Homescan consumer facts panel—that’s more than twice as many as any other breakfast food category. More than 92% of households made at least one ready-to-eat cereal purchase during that period, with the typical home spending $66.69.
With a rising awareness around healthier-for-you food products, many of these types of breakfast items are enticing consumer trial by marketing against a particular set of additional health claims. For example, sales of items making claims around flax or hemp seed were up 49.6% for the 52 weeks ended Sept. 4 across food, drug and mass outlets, including Walmart, according to Nielsen; sales of foods making antioxidant claims were up 26.6%, and sales of foods making fiber claims were up 5.3%.
Breakfast foodsSALES* | %CHANGE | |
Cereal (ready-to-eat) | $8,131.6 | -2.7% |
Granola/yogurt bars | 1,649.3 | 3.8 |
A/O frozen/refrigerated breakfast foods | 1,263.6 | 7.1 |
Cereal (hot) | 1,027.7 | -5.2 |
Toaster pastries | 952.4 | -0.4 |
Frozen waffles/pancakes/french toast | 811.8 | -7.4 |
Breakfast bars | 804.6 | -5.3 |
Cereal (granola and natural types) | 248.2 | 9.1 |
Hominy grits | 111.8 | -0.9 |
Instant breakfast (powdered) | 106.1 | 2.6 |
Wheat germ | 16.4 | 6.1 |
TOTAL | $15,124.0 | -1.5% |