Total US retail sales for the food storage market are $5 billion in 2013. Though the market struggled in the years immediately following the recession, it has since recovered and is growing slowly. Most products in the category benefit from having a high incidence of household use as these products are household staples that help consumers to store and prepare food. Category growth in the next few years will continue to be driven by this need. Mintel expects that sales will continue growing slowly to reach $5.4 billion in 2018.

The big challenge for this market is that consumers have a strong cost-savings mindset when shopping for these products, with price being one of their top considerations. Consumers’ desire to save money where possible has kept market growth at a slow pace. In addition, private label plays a big role in this category. Private label products account for the largest portion of sales in the MULO food storage market. In order to accelerate category growth and better compete against private label, market players will have to continue exploring and developing innovative new food storage products that provide users with added functional benefits, such as light indicators to show when food is starting to spoil. Such benefits could influence consumers to spend more money in this category and help brands better differentiate from private label offerings.

The key topics of focus for the 2014 report include understanding consumers’ current approach to cooking, which influences how they use food storage products; their overall usage of food storage products; and their primary shopping behaviors when making food storage purchases. This report will also explore understanding the attributes that consumers value most when selecting these products. Another key theme is determining what new types of products and attributes consumers would be most interested in seeing in order to give market players guidelines as to which products could help to accelerate category growth.

This report builds on the analysis presented in Mintel’s Food Storage—US, January 2013 and previous reports with this same title in April 2011, April 2010, May 2004, and February 2002.

Mintel defines the US food storage market as consisting of the following product categories:

• Plastic food bags

• Aluminum foil

• Plastic wrap

• Wax paper and parchment paper

• Food storage containers*

* Sales figures from this segment include both food storage and household storage containers due to data constraints.

Value figures throughout this report are at rsp (retail selling prices) excluding sales tax unless otherwise stated.

Market Size and Forecast and Segment Performance—Total retail sales based on Information Resources, Inc. InfoScan Reviews; US Census Bureau, Economic Census; HomeWorld Business, “2013 Housewares Census”

Retail Channels—Based on Information Resources, Inc. InfoScan Reviews; US Census Bureau, Economic Census; HomeWorld Business, “2013 Housewares Census”; except supermarket and drug store sales, which are based on Information Resources, Inc. InfoScan Reviews

Leading Companies and Brand Shares—Based on MULO sales data from Information Resources, Inc. InfoScan Reviews. MULO is defined as Multi Outlet, representative of the following channels: Total US Grocery, Mass, Total US Drug, Total Walmart, Dollar, Military, and Club. Note that the values shown in this section differ from the Market Size/Forecast and Segment Performance sections of this report. Companies and brands sales data encompass only sales through MULO channels, while Market Size/Forecast and Segment sales cover the entire retail market.

For the purposes of this report, Mintel commissioned exclusive consumer research through GMI to explore consumer consumption of/attitudes and behaviors toward food storage products. Mintel was responsible for the survey design, data analysis, and reporting. Fieldwork was conducted in December 2013 among a sample of 2,000 adults aged 18+ with access to the internet.

Mintel selects survey respondents so that they are proportionally balanced to the entire US adult population based on the key demographics of gender, age, household income, and region. Mintel also slightly oversamples, relative to the population, respondents that are Hispanic or Black to ensure an adequate representation of these groups in the survey results. Please note that Mintel surveys are conducted online and in English only. Hispanics who are not online and/or do not speak English are not included in the survey results.

Mintel has also analyzed data from Experian Marketing Services, using the Simmons NCS (National Consumer Study) and the Simmons NHCS (National Hispanic Consumer Study). The NHCS was carried out during July 2012-September 2013 and the results are based on the sample of 20,772 adults aged 18+, with results weighted to represent the US adult population.

While race and Hispanic origin are separate demographic characteristics, Mintel often compares them to each other. Please note that the responses for race (White, Black, Asian, Native American, or other race) will overlap those that also are Hispanic, because Hispanics can be of any race.

The following is a list of abbreviations used in this report.

Within the consumer data analysis, Mintel segments cooks into three groups:

• Portions Cooks: Consumers who cook only the number of portions that they need for themselves and/or their household.

• Leftovers Cooks: Consumers who make more than what they or their household eats in one night and save the rest for leftovers.

• Batch Cooks: Consumers who cook in big batches and reheat food throughout the week.

Generations are discussed within this report, and they are defined as:

* also known as Generation Y

In order to provide an inflation-adjusted price value for markets, Mintel uses the CPI to deflate current prices. The CPI is defined as follows: