Packaged Facts: Food Gifting Occasions--and Sales--Continue to Expand

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Jun 28, 2018, 09:42 ET

ROCKVILLE, Md., June 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. food gifting market continues to grow. Market research firm Packaged Facts forecasts sales to rise by 4% in 2018, based on findings published in the report Food Gifting in the U.S.: Consumer and Corporate, 6th Edition. Among major growth drivers, usage occasion innovation is providing more consumers more reasons to give the gift of food to themselves or to someone else.

To be sure, the winter holidays remain a food gifting mainstay: some 54% of those who have purchased food gifts for others in the last 12 months have done so for the winter holidays. And birthdays, Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day remain popular food gifting occasions. Everyday gifting occasions also resonate. Some 23% of those purchasing food gifts for others have done so to say thank you, for example.

Given the outsized importance major holidays and tradition play in their market, food gifting marketers need to continue inventing and reinventing food gifts and to keep a watchful eye for ways to broaden holiday-related purchase rationales. Lindt helps show the way. For Valentine's Day, Lindt spun the long-held assumptions about holiday participants on its head, framing Valentine's Day as a way "to share love," giving it room to market "Galentine's Day." By pairing chocolates with craft beer, Chuao Chocolatier blurs traditional lines, including more males as target recipients in the bargain. Meanwhile, EHChocolatier markets Halloween chocolate for the adults in the house. Each marketer succeeds in expanding on occasions for use.

Occasion expansion doesn't stop there. With culinary botanicals, Harry & David seamlessly blends the floral category with the food category, filling a market niche and helping to create a new product category. Meanwhile a raft of chocolate marketers are positioning chocolate products as giftable snacks, and Chuao Chocolatier even offers a line of indulgent breakfast options, breaking into new dayparts. And who needs an occasion, when making, eating or learning about the product becomes the occasion? Tours, classes, and sponsored events provide the means to do so.

Indeed, industry innovation may be at a peak, driven not only by occasion expansion but also by healthy indulgence, sustainability and fair trade, storytelling, celebrity, aspirational experiences, gourmet and artisan, customization and personalization, and (of course) tradition.

The result is a market that remains steadily bound to major occasions where food gifting has found a consistent home, while moving beyond seasonal reliance and opening up more ways to court the younger consumers needed to keep it healthy.

About the Report

For this report, food gifts are defined as food items that are packaged in a way that is suitable for gifting. Food gifts must be purchased; a food item prepared at home and given to someone is not included. There are two types of food gifts: 1) Gift-packaged candy – includes boxed chocolates, other gift-packaged chocolate and non-chocolate gift-packaged candy; and 2) Specialty food gifts – gift-packaged foods other than candy/chocolate. Food gifts range from baskets of treats to eat while watching football to food gift baskets at Christmas or birthdays. Food gifts can be purchased for any occasion or no occasion, for someone else or for oneself. While some food gifts, particularly assortments, may include beverages such as coffee or alcohol, those products as stand-alone gifts are excluded from this report. Food baskets refer to pre-packaged assortments of foods and beverages, not consumer-assembled baskets of these items.

View additional information about Food Gifting in the U.S.: Consumer and Corporate, 6th Edition, including purchase options, the abstract, table of contents, and related reports at Packaged Facts' website: https://www.packagedfacts.com/updates/Food-Gifting.

About Packaged Facts

Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com, publishes market intelligence on a wide range of consumer market topics, including consumer demographics and shopper insights, consumer financial products and services, consumer goods and retailing, consumer packaged goods, and pet products and services. Packaged Facts also offers a full range of custom research services.

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SOURCE Packaged Facts