To provide much needed knowledge and insight for the range of businesses, marketers, and advertisers that need it, this report examines Hispanic attitudes and behaviors towards dining at home—in six main sections. The first section of this report examines a core set of demographics that both uniquely describes the Hispanic consumer and helps illustrate the role of the Hispanic consumer with respect to dining out. The second section of this report examines expenditures, comparing the average expenditures of the total population, Hispanics, and non-Hispanics.

Subsequent sections assess attitudes towards home cooking—by comparing Hispanic responses to questions against those of other ethnicities and races as well as by analyzing questions asked exclusively of Hispanics. In these sections, Mintel analyzes data from the Simmons National Consumer Survey (NCS) and the Simmons National Hispanic Consumer Survey (NHCS), as well as results from its own exclusive custom research.

Thus, the third section analyzes Hispanic attitudes and usage patterns regarding home cooking, such as who cooks the meals, how long meals take to prepare, and attitudes about scratch cooking. The fourth section analyzes home cooking versus prepared and frozen foods, as well as attitudes toward prepared foods and fast food. The fifth section analyzes opinions about cooking and novel foods and marketing incentives, as well as food attributes. In the last section, Mintel assesses responses regarding the most important meal of the day.

Wherever possible, the data was analyzed to compare not only Hispanics and the overall population, but the non-Hispanic population as well. In addition, where data was available, the Hispanic population was segmented by characteristics associated with acculturation and other cultural differences. Specifically, Hispanics were segmented by nativity (whether born in the U.S. or another country), language spoken in the home, and country of origin or heritage.