Bi-Weekly Trends 12/8-12/21: Christmas Food Trends
Since this will be the last bi-weekly trends piece published before the new year, we dug into our recipe network to find the biggest trends surrounding Christmas, one of the most highly anticipated holidays of the year for brands, retailers and consumers alike.
This Christmas season, we saw a clear food trend emerge: Christmas cookies. While this sweet treat always booms during the holidays, we’ve never seen it dominate at these levels before.
We dig into consumer engagement with cookies in 2020 compared to 2019 to determine exactly how much more consumers are loving them this year. Next, we ranked the top festive cookies by state to figure out which recipes topped the charts this season. Then, we found that peanut butter, both a pantry staple and a holiday favorite, skyrocketed in popularity in December, as one of the most popular holiday flavors. Finally, we compared cookies to what’s typically the top ingredient in our recipe network, chicken.
Christmas Cookies Dominate
This year during Thanksgiving, we noticed a definite trend of consumers turning to casseroles and pies, which can be cleanly cut and served with utensils, over handheld bites and appetizers, which are typically served and picked over using hands. This Christmas, however, with fewer consumers hosting large Christmas parties, or even forgoing small Christmas get-togethers with friends, Christmas cookies are taking over our recipe network.
Easy to gift in tins, cellophane or mason jars, and an easy way to have fun and bond with immediate family during the holiday season, many consumers are turning away from more formal Christmas meals and toward new and more casual traditions, like a plate of Christmas snowball cookies for the kids (and cocktails for the adults).
In fact, within the top 50 recipes in our network over the past two weeks (12/8-21/2020), 78% of total recipes were holiday-themed treats and desserts and only 22% were savory dishes, like casseroles and soups. In 2019 within the same timeframe, 68% of total recipes were sweets and 32% were savory dishes.
Top Christmas Cookies By State
Because Christmas cookies dominated this year compared to the prior year, we dug into our recipe network to figure out the top Christmas cookies by state, similar to what we did in our Thanksgiving bi-weekly trends.
Peanut Butter as a Pantry Staple and Holiday Favorite
Peanut butter was, by far, the most popular cookie ingredient in the top two cookie recipes across the nation, Classic Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies and Peanut Butter Snowballs.
Peanut butter exploded in popularity during the height of the pandemic in March, with peanut butter sales up 75% YoY. Similarly, Chicory’s own recipe network saw 55% growth YoY in peanut butter recipe views, indicating that consumers were including peanut butter in their pandemic stock up trips.
While the industry might have expected that increased purchase of peanut butter during the height of the pandemic would have made consumers sick of this typical holiday favorite, this holiday season has shown that consumers are loving peanut butter in even greater quantities than the year before.
It’s something we touched on in our industry perspective published in April 2020 on how temporary hoarding behaviors would develop into long-term permanent behaviors and shift regular consumer grocery shopping and cooking habits. Changes in buying behavior led to dramatic changes in cooking behavior and recipe searches. As a result, we’re seeing pandemic hoarding staples, like peanut butter, surge in popularity during this season, either to use up what’s already in their pantries, or to return to normalcy with this comforting holiday favorite.
Consumers Choose Cookies Over Chicken
Finally, we found that holiday cookies unseated our all-time ingredient and recipe champion: chicken. The competition between cookies and chicken, two food categories that typically go head to head throughout the year with chicken typically dominating year-round, came out with a clear winner for Christmas. Consumers are clearly going for their favorite Christmas cookies, over savory chicken dishes.
Chicken is typically the top recipe category within our network, and relatively stable. But around the end of Thanksgiving, when consumers started ramping up their Christmas preparations, we saw a small dip in consumer engagement with chicken recipes and an incredible increase in engagement with cookie recipes. In fact, there was a 125% increase in engagement with cookies from the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving to this past weekend (12/12-20/2020), but only an 18% increase in engagement with chicken.
Plus, over this past weekend, engagement with cookies outnumbered engagement with chicken by 58%, indicating that consumers are prioritizing their new and more casual Christmas traditions over searching for new recipes for their everyday meals.
Compare this to the same timeframe in 2019, when engagement with Christmas cookies barely exceeded engagement with chicken recipes. And, in fact, the last weekend in that timeframe in 2019 showed 13% less engagement with cookie recipes compared to chicken recipes.
Recipe Network Traffic and Online Grocery Activity
Chicory recipe network traffic is nearly reaching levels seen during Thanksgiving 2020, indicating that recipe views during Christmas may outnumber Thanksgiving for the first time ever. In fact, recipe views on 12/20/2020 only lag behind recipe views on day-before-Thanksgiving 2020 by about 13%.
Mirroring recipe traffic, online grocery activity on 12/20/2020 also nearly reached day-before-Thanksgiving 2020 levels, lagging behind by only 12%.
Key Takeaways
As consumers engage with recipes and online grocery services at high levels this holiday season, brands need to make sure that they’re using effective contextual strategies to reach consumers where they’re looking for inspiration.
What were once thought of as unchangeable consumer habits, like formal dinners during the holidays, family celebrations for Christmas and even the proliferation of savory casseroles during this season, are proven to change at the drop of a hat. What will determine brand and retailer success is how quickly they can also adapt to changing consumer habits. That may mean aligning with sweet recipes instead of the classic savory dishes that typically dominate, particularly during the week leading up to Christmas.
Chicory’s data shows that hoarding food trends may still apply during the holiday season, as consumers search for ways to use up what they have in the pantry or search for comfort in their favorite holiday treats and dishes. The popularity of peanut butter during the height of the pandemic and now, during this holiday season, proves that hoarded products may still bring delight and comfort to consumers. Even if products were pantry staples that consumers stocked in their pantries, help them find ways to use them up in fun and festive ways.
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