Shopping local for good quality products is fast becoming more important than ever for the Irish consumer, according to experts speaking at the Bord Bia Love Irish Food event this week (Wednesday, March 9).
The event, which was hosted by Alison Cowzer, welcomed a panel of speakers from Dunnes Stores, Kantar Ireland and University College Cork’s (UCC’s) Department of food business development.
Prof. Joe Bogue from UCC outlined a trend towards buying local, good quality products, saying people are placing more and more importance on these as we emerge from the pandemic.
He said that while there will always be a market for the low-cost, unbranded products, it is a relatively small one and that people are more keen than ever to buy Irish.
Importance of nutrition
According to Bogue, the importance of health and wellness as well as personalised nutrition also grew dramatically during the pandemic, which connects to the consumers’ demand for higher quality and functional foods.
Managing director of Kantar Ireland, David Berry, echoed these statements. He said that a number of key patterns have emerged recently, namely a move towards more ethical purchasing practices.
“There is a real demand for, and importance placed on buying local, Irish goods from consumers. The more that brands can tap into that, the better,” he said.
According to Berry, 43 of Kantar Ireland’s top 100 brands are Irish, and their share of spend on the top 100 brands is 48%.
Sustainability
Shopping local is not the only thing customers are becoming increasingly conscious of. Irish consumers are now more concerned about sustainability when buying food, particularly in relation to packaging.
According to Dr. Ilana Repar from UCC, who discussed future food trends at the event, this trend is growing. Options like reusable, refillable, edible and dual-use packaging should be considered by producers as consumers place increasing importance on the zero-waste movement.
Trends around the quantity of food purchased and where this takes place was also discussed at the event. According to John Wilson, director of food at Dunnes Stores, basket sizes are larger now than before the pandemic.
While the average basket size spiked during early lockdowns as people panic bought goods, it has since stabilised on a higher figure than 2019.
According to Wilson, this is likely due to an increase in home cooking as well as an increase in home entertaining.
“There is a residual level of people still working from home, leading to a rise in home cooking. There’s also been an increase in home entertaining and on that basis, we have seen more of our special occasion food experience an increase.
“Our ‘Simply Better’ range has doubled in demand since 2019 and we’ll be looking to push that hard,” he said.
Alongside an increased basket size, there is also increased demand for both in-store and online shopping. Speaking about Dunnes Stores’ recent experience, Wilson explained that whilst they launched online and home delivery options during the pandemic, demand for in-store shopping has remained high.
“Dunnes started offering online grocery in the pandemic and it now represents our fifth largest store. However, by going digital we noticed that we had availability problems in-store.
“We still had so many people shopping in person, that we had to enter into more dramatic ordering to avoid availability problems in our stores by the end of the week,” he said.
This pattern is evident across the board according to Berry who outlined that Tesco, Donnybrook Fair, Dunnes Stores, Lidl and Aldi have all announced physical expansions within Ireland since July 2021.
“There seems to be a trend towards developing online and new delivery methods but also developing brick and mortar stores. So, we will need to see growth in both sides,” he concluded.