Snack food growth largely driven by single-person households

The growth in snack foods consumed at meal times is largely being driven by single-person households, said The NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based information company, in its recently published “Snacking in America” report. Single-person households in the United States are 38 million strong and growing. In 2014, annual eatings per capita of snack foods consumed at meal times among solo diners were 191, compared to 167 in 2011. This group is having a significant impact on snacking in terms of eating behaviors, packaging and marketing.

Health and weight management is among the key motivations among solo diners for eating snack foods at meals, particularly better-for-you snack foods, NPD said (and is also among the key motivations for larger households). Tying into the rise of single-person homes, the most common over-indexing motivator cited across the better-for-you categories was that it came in a single-serve package.

Similar to a majority of other households, single-person households plan the snack foods that they will be eating at meals ahead of time, typically more than a day before. A significantly smaller amount of eating occasions include a snack food that was planned less than an hour before. Supermarkets tend to be the shopping outlets of choice for snack foods consumed at a meal, NPD noted.

“Smaller household sizes and eating alone are among the growing factors with snacking,” said Darren Seifer, NPD food and beverage industry analyst. “Food manufacturers and retailers should think about the unique needs of the solo consumer when developing products and packaging, and marketing messages should be crafted to be relevant to them and their snacking behaviors.”