A new study by consumer research firm Deloitte suggests fresh and/or convenience foods have the potential for a big year ahead. 

Released in September, “A Fresh (Food) Take on Grocery Convenience,” examines how grocers are navigating a new wave of change that is challenging their traditional business models. Stressors include emerging forms of competition, rising shopper expectations, and tightening consumer wallets. The report outlines how grocers can win a bigger “share-of-stomach” by bringing fresh and convenience together.

The study found nine in 10 respondents said fresh food makes them happy, equating fresh food with nutrition and want to buy healthy food.

Grocers love fresh food, too: This year, 52% said that the fresh department was going to be the most strategically important part or department to their business for the next 36 months, said Justin Cook, Deloitte U.S. Consumer Products lead researcher.

The No. 1 strategy for consumers trying to save money on groceries is being cautious about the food they buy to avoid at-home food waste. 

Forecasting 2025 Trends

Justin Cook, lead Consumer Products researcher at Deloitte, joins From the Cold Corner to share more about Deloitte’s research into the refrigerated and frozen consumer and how F&B manufacturers and processors can work with grocers to win a bigger share-of-stomach.

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“It was actually surprising to me at first, there's a whole bunch of different things they can do, but the number one way – and, this is across 15 countries –every single country is saving money by trying to reduce food waste,” Cook said.

“The second lesson was that there is power in what we call fresh convenience. So these two traditional strengths, if you could combine them in in new ways and in new parts of the value chain,” Cook said. “I think they are looking to packaged and frozen food to help that out. I don't think younger consumers consider that as ‘cheating’ when it comes to creating a healthy meal. We've got other research that shows that the younger consumers with frozen especially they're more open to it.”

Focusing R&D on marrying convenience and nutrition will be key for F&B manufacturers and processors to keep the consumer engaged, win the shelf space and maintain pricing power, Cook said. 

“We've been running this long-run study called Consumer Signals and we snuck in this question about a year-and-a-half ago. About 95% of people globally identified themselves as one of these food prep personalities. And we didn't know what proportion they were going to come in, but it turns out that the frugal kind of simple, basic meals personality is the most dominant one, globally followed very quickly by those who are kind of health motivated. That's over 50% of the population, just those two personalities,” Cook said. “The food enthusiasts – the foodies – which, despite what you might think from a social media feed, are only about 10 to 15% of the population. If all you knew was someone was a food enthusiast or eco-conscious, just based on that alone, they're going to spend about 10 to 12% more in the store. So these personalities translate to actionable things.” 

The report is based on two Deloitte surveys fielded in May and June 2024. The first surveyed 100 U.S.-based grocery retail executives from organizations with at least $1 billion in annual revenue. The second surveyed 2,000 U.S. consumers. Highlights include:

• Most consumers (90%) say fresh food makes them happy, more than half (52%) of grocery executives expect fresh to be their most strategically important department over the next one to three years.
•  In the battle of fresh vs. convenience, ease wins. Over half (52%) of shoppers say they value convenience now more than they did in the past. Grocers understand this growing value of convenience, as 85% say they are making significant investments to increase it.
• Over half (53%) of consumers say figuring out “what’s for dinner” is one of their major pain points, and 44% agree they would regularly buy from a grocery store that could help them with meal planning.

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