Solo Dining
With Americans cramming as much as possible into their daily lives, traditional lifestyle elements can in turn be left by the wayside. According to a recent report from market researcher NPD Group, for example, when Americans decide to pause to eat a meal, most of the time they do it alone.
This solo-dining trend brings opportunity for packagers and converters, and the evidence is on every shelf of your local supermarket. Darren Seifer, a food and beverage industry analyst for NPD Group, says keeping up with consumer trends can allow companies to innovate products that will fill the needs of potential buyers.
“The number of solo eating and beverage occasions have wide-ranging implications for food and beverage marketers in terms of new products, packaging, and positioning,” he says. “As lifestyles shift it’s key for marketers to profile and segment occasions when their product is consumed in various ways, including solo versus social occasions, in order to connect most effectively with consumers.”
NPD reports that Americans eat breakfast alone 60 percent of the time, either away from home or on the go. Breakfasts are often eaten at school, or under time constraints. The same goes with lunches, 55 percent of which are solo meals. And nearly a third of dinners are consumed in a solo setting. In addition to more hectic lifestyles across the country, another driving factor is that 27 percent of American households consist of just one inhabitant, the highest percentage of one-person homes in US history, according to U.S. Census data.
Bella DePaulo, Ph.D, an expert on single life and frequent writer about dining alone in restaurants, states in an August post on her PsychCentral.com blog “Single at Heart” that there are plenty of positives of eating alone. She states that while meals are traditionally considered to be social times, they can be good times individual reflection or enjoyment.
“Perhaps also relevant is how easy it is to entertain ourselves when we are on our own,” she writes. “Personally, I don’t mind daydreaming or thinking through something I’ve been trying to figure out while I’m eating. But for those who prefer external distractions, our gadgets make those oh so easy to access.”
For converters, the rise of solo meals presents significant opportunity. Brand owners are already creating a wide range of single-serving versions of entrees, especially in the prepared foods category. Some are in packages for calorie-counters, some for quick-serve convenience and ease of preparation, while others are just down-sized versions of larger meals. Interestingly, the smaller size packages often require proportionally more packaging material for their size than the standard size packages, while sharing the same needs for brand identity, packaging security, and materials as the family-sized versions. And these needs all mean package printers and converters are ideally positioned to take advantage of the growing surge in solo dining.
