Spend on snacks and drinks away from home recovers fully to pre-COVID levels
Spend on snacks and drinks away from home recovers fully to pre-COVID levels according to the World Panel.
Worldpanel’s latest quarterly OOH Barometer report shows that the value of the global out-of-home (OOH) snacks and drinks market has finally recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Growth in Q1 of 2023 reached 11% year-on-year, taking the total spend to $16.4 billion, compared with $14.7 billion in Q1 of 2020.
This uplift represents the eighth consecutive quarter of growth since the summer of 2021. In the last quarter of 2022 the rise seemed to be slowing, as a result of inflation and the pressure on consumers’ budgets, but it has quickly rebounded.
Meanwhile ice cream spend soared in Ireland over recent weeks with the heatwave sending flocks of hot and thirsty customers into their local convenience stores.
A report in the Irish Independent lamented that the cost of a basic ’99 had risen to over three euro – while more adventurous and discerning palates were seeking weird and wonderful flavours such as avocado, goat’s cheese, sweet potato – with reports of increasingly adventurous ice-cream connoisseurs seeking out the weird, wonderful and downright ridiculous.
Costs of sugar, logistics and other basic materials have meant ic-cream prices have had to increase in most parts of the country – but when the sun’s out, the demand for ice cream, drinks and snacks soars too – so with summer in Ireland packed into a few weeks each year, it makes sense to make sales while the sun shines.
