We took a look at how the snack industry is being impacted by Millennial parents by examining the food values of Millennials, their personal snacking behaviors and their parenting priorities, and gathered a list of snack purchasing trends. Here’s what we found:
Snack and meal lines can blur: While Millennial parents are unlikely to skip meals for their kids, more healthful, filling snacks and smaller meals for kids are more common among Millennial parents – especially as kids and parents spend much of their days on the go.
The bar for healthy snacking is at an all-time high: The Millennial generation, along with the younger Gen Z cohort, are more willing to pay a premium for healthy foods than older generations,, and Millennials have set a high bar for what constitutes as a healthy food or snack, especially when it comes to food purchased for their children.
Millennials tend to look for the following when seeking out healthy snacks:
Whole foods: The NPD Group, in their Future of Snacking report, predicts that snacking is increasingly becoming a way to solve a wellness need for consumers, and as such, Millennials are seeking out snacks that are whole foods (quite often, fruit).
On-the-go produce: On-the-go, snacking produce has become an exploding industry over the past 10 years. While families are the driving force behind this trend, Millennials parents buy more on-the-go produce than the average household.
Natural ingredients: Millennials are more likely to avoid highly processed snacks and will instead look for snacks that, if processed, only have natural ingredients. For some, it is not enough to have organic or natural claims on food labels; Millennials commonly read ingredient lists to see if label claims can be substantiated.
Healthy and local brand values matter: Futurecast research found that Millennial parents are opting for private label brands instead of big brands, having greater confidence that private brands are more committed to producing healthy food than brands that traditionally sell processed or mass-produced foods.
Foods low in artificial sugar: Another popular barometer for determining the healthfulness of a snack food is to look at sugar content. As a byproduct of a generational war against sugar, Millennial parents are worried about the sugar levels in foods for their children, particularly artificial sugars.
Convenience still remains king: Still, Millennial parents face the same daily realities that require that snacking and food preparation be convenient, which traditionally, has been largely at odds with being healthy. The ideal is that Millennial parents can find food that is nutritious, high quality and convenient. This is what’s driven the popularity of fast casual chains like Chipotle and Panera among Millennials, and premium baby food pouches among Millennial parents.
Snack foods that will see the most success among health-conscious Millennial parents will be those that can deliver on convenience while passing a tough test for promoting the health and wellness of kids.