Retail food stores have improved their freshly prepared, made-to-order foods and have become strong competitors to restaurants. As consumers are still concerned about spending, one way they can enjoy restaurant-quality foods is at retail food stores, which are offering high-quality, freshly made foods that are easy to grab and go. Further, as grocery stores become more sophisticated in their endeavors, in-store restaurants and foods will continue to eat away at foodservice market share.

This report will explore consumer attitudes and behaviors with respect to freshly prepared foods that are ready to go, in retail. These products include foods such as entrees, side dishes, soups, salads, appetizers and other dishes that compete directly against restaurant foods; this does not include frozen foods. The report will explore consumer motivations, attitudes, and reasons for purchase. It will show during which dayparts consumers purchase these freshly prepared foods both at retail, and at restaurants (for comparison), and how influences such as convenience, quality, health and food experience come into play.

For the purposes of this report, Mintel commissioned exclusive consumer research through GMI to explore consumer attitudes and behaviors toward buying freshly prepared foods at retail, in comparison to restaurants. Mintel was responsible for the survey design, data analysis, and reporting. Fieldwork was conducted in February 2015 among a sample of 2,000 adults aged 18+ with access to the internet.

Mintel selects survey respondents by gender, age, household income, and region, so that they are proportionally representative of the US adult population using the internet. Mintel also slightly over-samples, relative to the population, respondents that are Hispanic or Black to ensure an adequate representation of these groups in our survey results and to allow for more precise parameter estimates from our reported findings. 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.

In addition to quantitative consumer research, Mintel also conducted an online discussion group among a demographically mixed group of adults aged 18+. This discussion group was asynchronous (ie not run in real time), functioning like a blog or bulletin board, with questions remaining posted for a predetermined period of time. This method allows participants to respond reflectively, at their leisure, or to log off to think about any issues raised, and return later to respond. Participants were recruited from GMI’s online consumer panel.

For this report, the online discussion panel ran in the month of March 2015, and all participants quoted had bought ready-made prepared meals (not frozen) from a supermarket or retailer, and/or bought foods from a restaurant. This report contains some of their written opinions, distributed throughout different sections. Only minor grammatical errors in their responses have been corrected.

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:

The following terms are used in this report:

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

*also known as Generation Y or Echo Boomers

** previously known as Post-Millennials, Matrix Generation

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: