Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness

Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness

At 80 million strong, Baby Boomers account for 44% of affluent American households (those with annual incomes over $75k). As a result, Boomers possess a substantial amount of disposable income and purchasing power—a combination that makes them attractive to manufacturers and marketers across the consumer packaged goods landscape, especially in regards to premium priced products designed to promote health and wellness.

Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness, a report co-published by Packaged Facts and CCD Innovation, spotlights nutritional and dietary patterns that feed Boomers’ decisions on dining and food purchases. Food industry professionals are wise to focus on the evolution of these wellness trends and to differentiate between needs of the three groups of Boomers: young Boomers (ages 49-54), middle Boomers (ages 55-61), and older Boomers (ages 61-67).

From juicing mixology to nutritional genomics, Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness explores essential trends and developments to food consumption and purchasing, mapping applications along the product continuum. For many Boomers, it’s an expanding understanding of microbiomes and eating with a purpose of creating a more healthful personal bacterial ecology.

Many Boomers are concerned about developing and maintaining a holistic well-being, which in turn is fueling Boomers’ fairly sophisticated dietary needs. For some other Boomers, food behaviors are reflective of a robust discretionary spending capacity and a need to accommodate a busy lifestyle, reflected in increased restaurant usage and the use of technology to conveniently order food. Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness presents these compelling food industry opportunities in terms of CCD Innovation’s proprietary five-stage Trend Mapping©:

• Stage 1: Dietary Self-Tracking - Data-collecting devices, apps and programs are helping Boomers monitor health metrics.
• Stage 1: Nutritional Genomics - Advances in understanding of the human dietary system are driving choices designed to prevent, delay or treat chronic conditions.
• Stage 2: Eating for Our Microbiome - Boomers feed their personal bacterial ecology for overall health.
• Stage 3: Grocery Shopping 2.0 - Older consumers embrace technological innovation to order fresh, packaged and prepared foods.
• Stage 4: Juicing Meets Mixology - A focus on beverages that provide proteins, nutrition, microbiotics, and health and healthful benefits.
• Stage 4: Restaurant Redux - Dining out more frequently is a benefit of superior spending power and discretionary time.
• Stage 5: Food That’s Frozen vs. Frozen Food - Boomers look for healthy messaging in food that’s frozen, prompting new retailer messaging and a frozen food makeover.

Market Insights: A Selection From The Report

Baby Boomers want to be well fed when eating at home or dining out. And they have the discretionary income to achieve that goal. This demographic spends more on their weekly food budget than any other group, according to Packaged Facts. Boomers—most raised during the anti-authoritarian '60s and '70s—want choice, control and convenience too. And they want to be nourished in other ways, whether through travel and leisure, second careers, serious hobbies or passion projects.

This is, by and large, also a hedonistic group who seek fun, joy, indulgence and engaging experiences to enrich their lives. In short it's a generation that has the luxury of time, circumstances and income to pursue personal wellness with gusto. It's also a large and growing group, as noted elsewhere in this report, but it's worth repeating. Consider this—the 50+ segment will expand a whopping 34% between 2013 and 2030. It's a big market that's growing bigger fast. By 2050, there is expected to be some 161 million consumers 50 and older, a 63% increase over 2010.

A running thread through the boomer demographic in general, and this report in particular, is the increasing testing and application of start-up technology and internet innovations in the wellness and culinary space. We expect to see more developments in this fast, everchanging area. In increasing numbers, Boomers have proven they are open to embracing a 2.0 lifestyle where it meets their needs and dovetails with the key drivers that move this demographic. Those drivers include health & wellness, flavor adventure, individual customization (the so-called "Quantified Self ") and personal enjoyment. Boomers account for 40% of consumers paying for wireless service and purchasing Apple computers. Some are innovators or early adopters; once new technologies go mainstream, they are prolific users, whether it's internet surfing, social networking or online shopping. Paying attention to these drivers and considering them in product and service development is key to capturing a healthy share of baby boomer business

Press Release

Sophisticated Boomers Seek Out Wellness, Self-Quantification as Spending Power, Food Experiences Evolve and Multiply

With Baby Boomers numbering about 80 million and these consumers accounting for 44% of all households with annual incomes over $75,000, the segment is fast-becoming a focal point for the food industry. Central to the success of understanding this consumer demographic is Boomer Wellness--a pivotal reference point for food industry stakeholders, according to Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness, by leading market research publisher Packaged Facts and CCD Innovation.

Fueling dietary needs that are fairly sophisticated, many Boomers are concerned about developing and maintaining a holistic well being. For others, food behaviors are reflective of a robust discretionary spending capacity and a need to accommodate a busy lifestyle, like increased restaurant usage and using technology conveniences to order food.

"Boomers grew up during an era when eating out became a form of entertainment, not just a special occasion affair," says Kimberly Egan, CEO of CCD Innovation. "They've also become accustomed to convenience food in all its forms and expect variety and choice at food retailers, specialty groceries and supermarkets." Egan says understanding nutrition, aging and convenience is part of the multi-faceted spectrum of the Boomer market and harnessing this understanding is opportunistic for food businesses. Included in the report is the sequencing of the decision-making cycle and consumer behaviors through CCD Innovation-s proprietary Trend Mapping:

• Stage 1: Nutritional Genomics--Advances in understanding of the human dietary system drive choices designed to prevent, delay or treat chronic conditions.
• Stage 1: Dietary Self-Tracking--Data-collecting devices, apps and programs help monitor health metrics.
• Stage 2: Eating for our Microbiome--Boomers feed their personal bacterial ecology for overall health.
• Stage 3: Grocery Shopping 2.0--Older consumers embrace technology innovation to order fresh, packaged and prepared foods.
• Stage 4: Restaurant Redux--Dining out more frequently is a benefit of superior spending power and more time.
• Stage 4: Juicing Meets Mixology--A focus on beverages that provide nutrition, microbiotics, proteins and healthful benefits.
• Stage 5: Food That's Frozen vs. Frozen Food--Boomers look for healthy messaging in food that's frozen prompting new retailer messaging and a frozen food "makeover."

For more information on the Culinary Trend Mapping Report: Boomer Wellness, please visit: http://www.packagedfacts.com/redirect.asp?progid=85948&productid=7776547.

The Culinary Trend Mapping Report is co-published by CCD Innovation and Packaged Facts. Individual issues and annual subscriptions are available at www.packagedfacts.com/landing/culinarytrends.asp.

About CCD Innovation -- CCD Innovation is a full-service food and beverage strategic innovation company that successfully blends culinary creativity with consumer insights, trends and marketing expertise. Visit www.ccdinnovation.com.

About Packaged Facts -- Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com, publishes market intelligence on a wide range of consumer market topics, including consumer demographics and shopper insights, consumer financial products and services, consumer goods and retailing, consumer packaged goods, and pet products and services. Packaged Facts also offers a full range of custom research services. To learn more, visit: www.packagedfacts.com. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. Please also visit Packaged Facts on LinkedIn for more culinary, food packaging, food retailing and foodservice insights: http://www.linkedin.com/company/417888.