Chicory’s Bi-Weekly Recipe Trends: Week of 8/17/2020

The end of summer and the start of the cooler fall season typically marks a major shift in trends in Chicory’s shoppable recipe network. Typically, a “return to routine” and the back to school season mean greater views and orders across our recipe network, but in an anything-but-ordinary year where engagement has surged since March, past years’ trends are no longer the norm.

Recipe usage as we move through August indicates that consumers are going back to their favorite convenient cooking devices, but also sticking to the homemade and from scratch cooking recipes that they learned over the past few months. For those who have been gardening this summer, recipes showing how to use up the fruits of their labor are surging and recipes incorporating store-bought pasta, too, are on the rise.

Consumers Are Figuring Out How to Use the Pasta They Panic-Bought and They’re Buying More

Consumers are looking for delicious ways to use up the dry pasta they stocked up on while pantry packing months ago by turning to simple pasta recipes. Further, online grocery orders for pasta are still up 44% YoY.

While the grocery industry feared that early panic buying would set off a period of low sales as consumers had too much in their pantries, our data shows that they’re still buying center store products while simultaneously looking for recipes to use up what they currently have. From January to present, online grocery orders for ingredients like flour, dried pasta and canned goods increased by an average of 98%. Although purchases of center store products gradually decreased after panic buying in March and April, levels are still higher than pre-pandemic. And the reappearance of many pasta and baking recipes in our network, consumers are also searching for ways to use up what’s already in their pantries while stocking up on those same products.

Consumers Incorporate Pandemic Practices Into Regular Routines

Data from our shoppable recipe network from the past two weeks shows that two seemingly divergent trends are returning to consumers’ kitchens. This may indicate that consumers are solidifying the new cooking habits and skills they learned over the past few months while regular habits return. This includes time-consuming bakes like homemade bread or all-day casseroles like lasagna.

On the flip side, convenient cooking devices--Instant Pots in particular--have been one of the biggest trends over the past few years. We saw a dramatic decline in usage as consumers spent more time at home than ever before and chose to use that time to make more recipes from scratch rather than typical shortcut methods. Then, we saw homemade recipes decline as consumers tired in the kitchen.

However, we’re seeing a resurgence of both trends as consumers incorporate both into their cooking habits.

Instant Pot Roast and Potatoes

Crock-Pot Chicken and Dumplings

Homemade Canned Spaghetti Sauce

Air Fryer Crispy Potatoes

Homemade Tortillas

As Gardening Surges, So Do Fresh Recipes

The first half of August saw a surge in pickling recipes, as consumers grew cucumbers all summer and searched for ways to use them up. We’re seeing a continuation of this gardening trend as recipes incorporating fresh ingredients dot our top 250 recipes list.

Basic Tomato Sauce with Fresh Tomatoes

Fresh Pear Bread

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

Garden Fresh Zucchini Salsa

The keyword “fresh” grew an incredible 83% in consumer engagement from the beginning of January to present and an impressive 56% from the beginning of summer.

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