What’s life like for prepared meal and entrée processors? Imagine a supermarket freezercase aisle with walls of closed-door, upright cases. Today’s energy-efficient displays are dark until motion detectors register a shopper’s movement. Then voila! That instantly triggers internal lighting to pop on and illuminate the shelves. And there’s the analogy. Today’s at-home meal solutions are front and center, right in the spotlight.
“With mandated shelter-at-home and restaurant dine-in restrictions across most of the country during the pandemic, we have had few options other than to prepare most of our meals at home,” says David Portalatin, author of Eating Patterns in America and a food industry advisor to The NPD Group Inc., Port Washington, N.Y. “Working from home, schooling at home, and preparing more meals means more of our meal times are a departure from the norm, with most consumers describing their meals as atypical.”