What it is
FMI, the food retailers’ association, using NielsenIQ sales data. The association has an interest in the category looking large.
FMI’s foodservice-at-retail report measures the deli, hot bar, prepared meals and other ready-to-eat food sold in grocery stores. The 2024 edition, published 18 November 2024, puts the category at about 50.9 billion dollars for the trailing 52 weeks, up 1.4%, with 70.7% of households buying regularly and 9.5 purchases a year on average.
The sales figures come from NielsenIQ; the household figures from FMI’s own research. The release names no sample size for the household figures.
What the commerce leader should take from it
- Seven households in ten already buy dinner from the grocer, in the store. The question the report asks is why the same grocer sells it online as ingredients.
- At 9.5 purchases a year the habit is occasional. The restaurant, at several meals a week, still owns tonight’s dinner.
- The category grew 1.4% in a year when food away from home grew faster; prepared food at grocery is holding, not winning.
Where to start
Finding 1.3 uses it for the size of the dinner trip. Attach one complete meal to the twenty dinner ingredients your household buys most online and measure the attach rate; the 50.9 billion is the pool it draws from.
Keep in mind
The release names no sample size for the household figures, and the report treats the numbers as an order of magnitude. It measures prepared food, not recipes, so it says nothing about the online meal solution the finding is about.