Breakfast tends to be the most polarizing meal of the day; some people love it while others almost never eat it. With most “breakfast believers” being either baby-boomers or families with children, companies are producing new products in an attempt to expand the market by getting younger adults hooked on breakfast foods. Some of the more successful innovations are products that combine aspects of popular breakfast foods for kids and adults into one according to a new Packaged Facts report, Breakfast: Retail Product Trends and Opportunities in the US 2nd Edition.
Yogurt has been a staple of the breakfast foods market for a long time, most recently manifesting itself in the recent Greek yogurt craze. Now that Greek yogurt’s popularity has slowed, marketers are looking to drinkable yogurt and yogurt smoothies to take its place at the breakfast table or meal on the go. And while the product isn’t new – think Danimals – it’s one of the fastest growing breakfast foods, logging a growth rate of 20% in the past year. Packaged Facts projects that the drinkable yogurt market will grow another 13% by 2022. New drinkable yogurt products can capitalize off of the nostalgia young adults may have for products such as Danimals, while also appealing to their more grown-up taste buds, nutritional interests and busy schedules.
“There is much room for innovation in breakfast foods,” says David Sprinkle, Research Director for Packaged Facts. “With the reputation for the most important meal of the day, maximizing the reputation of a product’s nutrition while highlighting its’ convenience, is critical in appealing to demographics across the board.”
Cereal remains the most popular breakfast food, and, perhaps not surprisingly, adults with young children are most likely to purchase cold cereal, as kids have a significant impact on their parents’ buying habits. Older generations are most likely to purchase hot cereal. But marketers have an opportunity to bridge the hot and cold cereal generation gap, as demonstrated by the explosion in popularity of overnight oats. Overnight oats combine the positive nutritional reputation of hot cereal with the convenience and familiarity of cold cereal, and have gained appeal across all generational demographics due to blogging, advertising campaigns and Instagram posts promoting the product.
