Chicory Network Trends: 12/1/2020-12/7/2020
Our recipe network revealed that Thanksgiving, the highest-trafficked week for recipes, looked a little bit different this year. Traditions were impacted by COVID-19 and many consumers shifted their yearly celebrations to include seafood, variations on classic favorites and delicious cookies. We dug into the trends in our recipe network to look forward to Christmas food trends and found some interesting patterns emerging this month.
This December, consumers are leaning into seafood instead of their usual pork and beef, particularly in stews and soups. Chicken, however, remains Americans’ go-to, with the popularity of creative variations on classic chicken noodle soup demonstrating a broader trend of consumers searching for new spins on comforting childhood favorites.
While some trends are changing, others remain the same, including high volume traffic to recipes for festive holiday cookies. But a small change in Christmas cooking during the transition from November to December may indicate a larger trend forming around various holidays throughout the holidays and into the new year. With more flexible schedules and more time at home, consumers are gradually ramping up their holiday preparations after Thanksgiving, rather than rushing to prepare everything on the first weekend of December.
Wintery Seafood Dishes Make a Big Splash
Over the past two weeks (which includes Thanksgiving), seafood-based soup and stew recipes began appearing on our top 250 recipes list. While crab cakes and grilled salmon were summer-long favorites and remain in our top recipes list, they’re now joined by warm, wintery seafood spreads in the form of hearty soups.
After the Thanksgiving trend of consumers branching out to incorporate duck and Cornish hen on their Thanksgiving tables, the emerging popularity of seafood may be giving consumers a new adventure in the kitchen. Clams and scallops have proven to be particularly popular over the past few days.
As with many other trends like bread baking earlier this year, this may also be driven by consumers having more time to cook at home and the desire for classic restaurant foods that they typically don’t make at home.
Classic Chicken Noodle Soup with a Twist
The top five noodle soup recipes in our shoppable recipe network show that consumers are stepping outside of the can to create the country’s most comforting meal while they work and learn from inside their homes. With more time at home to let a soup simmer, they dressed up their Thanksgiving leftovers for a warm weeknight meal.
It’s a trend that we’ve been seeing across the board, particularly this year, as consumers spent more time in their kitchens than ever before, and thus, had more opportunities to be creative with their ingredients and cooking methods or branch out using devices that they were previously unfamiliar with. While convenient cooking devices declined in popularity during the height of the pandemic as consumers honed their cooking skills, we saw a resurgence around the beginning of August. Now, even more consumers are turning back to their favorite pre-pandemic cooking methods.
Another classic American dish, macaroni and cheese, was given the same treatment. Popularity of mini mac and cheese “bites” indicate some macs were getting the leftover treatment, while other popular recipes incorporated a keto twist.
Much of macaroni and cheese recipe views occurred on Thanksgiving, as consumers didn’t let the pandemic prevent them from making this holiday favorite.
These two trends also continue the overarching trend this year of consumers cooking comfort foods at home, which have sustained popularity throughout the year.
Christmas Cookies Top the Charts
With Thanksgiving in the past, the first of December always marks the advent of Christmas sweets across Chicory’s top recipe charts.
The two top trends for consumers in the sweets category were Christmas cookies and cake pop-type sweets called snowballs.
When we examine recipe views for Christmas recipes in 2019 compared to 2020, an interesting trend emerges.
In 2019, recipe views and consumer engagement with Christmas recipes remained at a relatively low level until right before December 1st, the first weekend after Thanksgiving in December, when recipe views shot up by 110% in just two days. The all-time high during the 11/1/2019 to 12/7/2019 period was on December 1st.
On the other hand, recipe views and consumer engagement with Christmas recipes this year have steadily increased since about mid-November, leading to an all-time high on December 7th (and the trend may be that traffic continues to grow).
We may attribute this to consumers being able to get into the holiday spirit gradually over the past few weeks, while working from home or with more flexible schedules, rather than having to tackle holiday preparations for the month, all on the first weekend of December. Instead of a large Saturday or Sunday peak in recipe views, as was typical in previous years when consumers saved holiday and meal prepping for weekends, we’re seeing more gradual increases throughout the week.
Key Takeaways
Consumers are looking at recipes more and more throughout the month instead of doing their weekly meal planning on Sundays or full weekends. We’re seeing an ongoing trend of consumers planning and shopping all week- and all season-long.
Brands should be sure to market to consumers throughout the holiday, and make sure not to focus all the attention on the last-half of December, when holiday preparations typically skyrocket. Further, this holiday season will be about brands finding the balance of targeted and relevant content, between the hyper-engagement of everyday meals while cooking at home and continuous holiday planning throughout the month.
Consumers are looking for fun variations on their favorite classic dishes this year. Brands should develop creative treatments for their products and should continue to promote how items can meet special diets (keto), work in popular countertop appliances (air fryers) or put a new spin on a classic (margaritas with a crushed Oreo rim)! With consumers reenergizing in their kitchens for the holidays, it’s the perfect time to encourage them to experiment with new products and uses.
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