Focus On Roast Dinners: 17 August

Focus On: Roast Dinners by Emma Weinbren

Download the synopsis here

Publishing: 17 August

Advertising deadline: 8 August

Submissions deadline: 1 August

The Story

Who wants to share the roast spuds? A dwindling number of Brits, it seems. To avoid the battle over who gets the crispiest potato, many consumers are opting for solo roast dinners. The number of roasts eaten alone is rising, both during the week and at the weekend. Forget the ready meal – it seems the roast is becoming the ultimate dinner for one. So what does this mean for the market? Do suppliers need to rethink their portion sizes? Is this attracting demand for products that can fit around a single-person meal, such as frozen items? And what does all this mean for food waste?

Main themes

Portion sizes: What are retailers and suppliers doing to appeal to the solo diner? To what extent are they tailoring portion sizes?

Frozen: Frozen food seems like an obvious winner for a consumer that doesn’t want to prepare a heap of veg or Yorkshire puds at once. To what extent is that impacting on sales?

Demographics: Who is behind the rise of the single-person roast dinner and why?

Meat: Chicken is up, but red meat consumption is down. Is there anything red meat can do to appeal to this emerging market?

Food waste: Is the solo roast dinner trend a recipe for food waste? Or are there simple ways to ensure every trimming gets used up? Kantar demographic data: Which demographics are eating the most roast dinners? And how has that changed?

Kantar consumption data: The meat, veg and accompaniments most frequently eaten at roast dinners.

Innovations: We identify four new products or product ranges that ideally have not appeared in The Grocer before including launch date, image and RSP.