Frozen food demand endures despite current trends focused on fresh ingredients
As the rising popularity of farmers markets and the locavore movement attest, fresh foods are in high demand among American consumers. As a result, popular food segments of yesteryear—namely frozen and canned products—have gotten the cold shoulder as consumers often unfairly adopted the largely inaccurate presumption that fresh foods were significantly more nutritious than frozen or canned varieties. The emergent popularity of meal kits has likewise posed a challenge to frozen foods.
Nevertheless, the frozen food market has proven to be largely resilient in the face of both the fresh food and meal kit trends. Sales have been steady, if unspectacular, since 2012, according to market research firm Packaged Facts in the new report Frozen Foods in the US: Hot Meals, Sides, and Snacks, 6th Edition. Packaged Facts estimates that frozen food products in the collective categories of dinners/entrées, pizza, side dishes, and appetizers/snacks had overall sales of $22 billion in 2016, almost identical to the sales total four years prior.