‘Snacking’ Culture Proves To Be A Boon For Packaged Foods Industry

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Those are the ‘official’ calling time to hog on the meals of the day. But there is an increasing number of health conscious people preferring to eat smaller portions of meals throughout the day. There has been a rising trend in the packaged foods industry to cater to this segment with innovative food items suitable for consumption at regular intervals throughout the day.

Snacking During Commute 

Due to an increasing number of working professionals in the metros not finding the time to have their lunch or dinner at the appropriate times, the trend of pre-lunch or pre-dinner has become a norm. With an increasing amount of time spent at work and on commute, working professionals tend to snack on packaged foods over the course of a day. Sanjay Sharma, CEO of MTR Foods, notes that a working professional on average spends nearly 10 hours a day at work with 2 hours on average on commute. “This change in behaviour gave us an opportunity to tap this occasion by innovating and launching our traditional snacks portfolio, the on-the-go dessert portion packs and our breakfast-in-a-cup range which gives a quick meal in 3 minutes by just adding hot water,” added  

Convenient Measures

Packaged and ready-to-eat products has increasingly found a place in the working professionals’ meal habits. With a rising young population with more disposable income to spend on packaged food products, convenience usually rises to the top of list. Arbind Das, COO of Godrej Tyson Foods, said, “We are innovating to cater to such needs of the consumer. So while we already offer a packaged pre-cut chicken, we have also provided the option of a marinated chicken as well as ready-to-cook chicken nuggets. We see this trend not only in SEC A and B markets, but beyond that as well.” 

Food Association

Food has also become part of our daily routine with people associating food with different tasks of their own. Speaking to Economic Times, Devendra Chawla, Group President of Future Group said, “We live in times where instant gratification rules. No other category can provide better instant gratification than food. Whether it’s IPL or Bollywood movies, we need food and without food everything seems incomplete. We reward ourselves with food even when alone. When tired, we eat or drink to feel charged up and to meet people, we create food as an occasion. So every occasion now has food intertwined in it.”