Austen Donnellan, New Business Director at Bray Leino introduces the agency’s 2020 Food & Drink Report exploring some key reactions to lockdown with the wider long-term context.
When we published last year’s Food & Drink Report, nothing could have prepared us for the seismic lifestyle shifts which would impact on consumer behaviour in 2020. By the spring, as we were preparing to survey 1,000 Brits, the UK was heading into lockdown, providing an opportunity for us to understand shoppers’ minds at this time of unimaginable change.
As a result, the 2020 Food & Drink Report reveals some key reactions to lockdown within the bigger picture of long-term trends in consumer attitudes and behaviour. And with so much uncertainty around how COVID-19 will continue to affect our lifestyles over the coming years, these insights offer clues around how consumers might respond to future scenarios.
The events of recent months have forced many of us to re-evaluate and implement more thoughtful behaviours. And this plays into a key theme of the 2020 Food & Drink Report: the continuing, and indeed growing, trend for conscious consumerism, particularly around environmental issues. For example, over the past few years we’ve identified increasing avoidance of single use plastic packaging, and a significant rise in interest in ‘locally sourced’. In light of these trends, the recent surge in demand for veg boxes and other such food deliveries seems likely to stick.
We also see a rise in teetotalism and decline in drinking volume amongst young adults. Combined with the various COVID restrictions, this is likely to have long-term implications for what socialising in Britain looks like.
While we don’t know how COVID-19 will continue to affect society, as marketers we can begin to understand how immediate impacts fit into the wider context of consumer trends, applying the learnings to develop robust, calculated strategies.
As lockdown hit, 55% of consumers started cooking more from scratch. Interestingly, the group most likely to do this was 18-34-year-olds, suggesting lifestyle factors typically get in the way, but the interest is there. And a whopping 59% of consumers became more concerned about food waste.
Plant-based food choices are so ubiquitous you might be forgiven for thinking the nation was turning vegan. But last year we revealed that veganism had plateaued, and this year we can reveal that the number of vegans has halved! From 9%, now just 4% of the UK claims to be vegan.
The vegan trend might be losing steam, but the plant-based market continues to grow, thanks to the UK’s fastest growing diet choice: flexitarianism. 27% of the UK now claims to be limiting meat intake, in favour of a more balanced, flexitarian diet.
Plastics, especially non-recyclable, are a serious issue for shoppers; 72% agree they are concerned about the environmental implications of single-use plastic packaging, and 56% are seriously changing their behaviour around buying products which use non-recyclable packaging, having actively refrained from buying such products, up 5% on last year.
Great news for pasta, carbs are back on the menu! We see a 50% drop in the number of people avoiding carbs. And protein is really packing a punch, with one in four people favouring ‘high in protein’ products.
22% of the UK claim to be alcohol-free and 59% either already drink non-alcoholic drinks or are open to trying them. For brands rightly investing in low/no alcohol lines, the main factor when choosing is taste, cited as important by 65%.
Visit Bray Leino's profile to download and read the full report.
Austen leads Bray Leino’s business development operation, identifying, targeting and partnering with new B2B and B2C clients across sectors such as food and drink, healthcare and technology. With over two decades’ experience developing through the line consumer campaigns for high profile clients, Austen’s specialist knowledge spans TV led advertising campaigns, retailer activations, digital and social media campaigns, communications planning, branded content, direct marketing, evaluation tools, R&D and investment planning.
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