Trends in the Food and Beverage Industry for 2022

7. Delivery and convenience continue to reign

Speaking of delivery, convenience continued to reign supreme in 2021. A lot has changed in the food industry in recent years. We’ve seen the new dominance of grocery delivery services, meal kits, and food apps emerging one after another, and consumers have a lot to say. Here’s 2021 looked like in numbers:

• 17M: Total mentions related to the food industry and trends (+52% from 2019)
• 7M: Unique authors (+39% from 2019)

Ordering food delivery still had the largest share of voice within these conversations but grocery delivery and alcohol delivery services grew massively in popularity in 2020 compared to 2019.

Besides alcohol, groceries, and ready-to-eat food delivery, there was also a steady upward trend for conversation around meal kits. This trend curve from Google Trends confirms our hunch that people are getting more and more interested in this way of cooking.

What does all this delivery mean for restaurants? Well, it could spell bad news since consumers are keen to prepare restaurant-quality meals themselves at home with the help of meal kits. Perhaps one way to counter this is for restaurants to get involved in the world of meal kits.

We decided to dig a little further by looking at people talking about quitting drinking online, and those talking about planning to quit drinking.

It turns out that while lots of people may want to quit drinking, those reporting that they’ve actually quit altogether seem to be fewer in number. That said, being “sober curious” isn’t necessarily about quitting outright.

Alcohol companies seem to be aware of the “sober curious” trend. Industry players should see this increase in interest as an opportunity to invest in the non-alcoholic drinks category, expand their product offerings, and improve market share.