More Than A Meal

Wednesday, 06 June 2012 09:07

Written by Brian Numainville

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While grocery shoppers look to save money in a wide variety of ways, one opportunity to do so is to eat out less and cook at home more often. The recent U.S. Supermarket Experience Study conducted by The Retail Feedback Group found that over the coming months shoppers plan to eat out less at sit-down and quick-serve restaurants. At the same time, shoppers plan to more often prepare and eat dinner at home, as well as prepare, eat, or bring lunch and breakfast from home.

Saving money is certainly one key reason people eat more meals at home, with dozens of shoppers in our study using words such as “cheaper”, “inexpensive” and “less expensive” to describe a home-cooked meal. Further, these words are supported by shopper estimates in the study of the per-person average cost of a home-cooked meal ($5.93) versus eating out ($12.28).

While it might be easy to conclude that the only reason people eat home-cooked meals is to control expenses, there are other compelling reasons!

First, in the U.S. Supermarket Experience Study, when describing a home-cooked meal in one word, shoppers predominantly used words like “delicious”, “comforting”, “healthy”, “good” and “tasty”. This illustrates that home-cooked meals offer more than just a way to save money, but rather also evoke positive emotions with shoppers.

Next, recent research published in May 2012, in Public Health Nutrition, a Cambridge University journal, found that eating a home-cooked meal up to five times a week might extend your life. Findings indicated that subjects who cooked at home about five times a week were 47 percent more likely to still be alive after 10 years!

Finally, other research has illustrated many other benefits from eating meals at home, especially for children, ranging from cutting the risk of obesity to doing better in school.

In summary, eating home-cooked meals is not only more affordable than eating out, it can also be emotionally fulfilling and provide health benefits. By tying money-saving opportunities together with the positive benefits of eating home-cooked meals, food retailers can provide a true win-win opportunity for their customers!