Food Focus: October Trends
Fall baking, tailgating and Halloween
October typically calls to mind occasions like Halloween, tailgating and cozy fall baking. To validate that these trends are continuing this year and to what extent, we dug into the data from our network of 5.4+ million recipes in our network.
2019 to 2020 comparisons of baking revealed that from scratch baking may make a return this fall season, while classic shortcut baking mixes will spike as we approach the end of October.
Tailgating trends indicate that beef dominates among all meats, but chicken is becoming a more popular ingredient. Sandwiches offer an easy meal solution for home cooks entertaining, and beer is the alcoholic beverage of choice throughout the month.
Finally, it’s not October without Halloween candy and baking.
Home cooks are ready to fall into baking
In a “normal” year like 2019, add-to-carts of classic baking ingredients like sugar, butter and flour all consistently increase during big baking seasons, like fall. While they usually follow holiday occasions like Halloween, an evergreen trend like baking typically pushes past other seasonal food trends.
2020, on the other hand, showed that add-to-carts of the top three basic baking commodities, sugar, butter and flour, all declined following either Halloween weekend or the weekend immediately preceding Halloween. Potentially, we were seeing that after months of home baking and cooking, consumers were going all out for holidays and then burning out in the kitchen (no pun intended). On the other hand, our 2021 data shows that cooking habits have largely returned to 2019 norms, following huge changes in 2020.
This year, we expect October 2021 home baking to follow 2019 patterns of a consistent increase that persists even through the big Halloween holiday. With less kitchen fatigue and more at-home celebrations, we expect numbers to stabilize. Classic baking ingredients brands should be prepared for Q3 and Q4 baking that lasts throughout fall, and meets up with two of the largest baking holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Not all consumers choose to bake from scratch, though. Many use baking mixes, and unlike the classic flour, sugar and butter ingredients that easily achieve consistent scale, mixes are more subject to following occasions and holidays in our network. Dramatic spikes on Halloween of recipe views for baking mixes indicate that these products are a consumer favorite for shortcut treats during busy holidays.
The top ten baking mixes during October 2020 by recipe views are:
It’s not fall without tailgating
Across the nation, autumn represents more than cozy baked goods and the first holiday of the season, Halloween. For many, tailgating is a major part of fall season entertaining and home cooking. We looked to 2019 data in our recipe network of 1,500+ sites for tailgating, since games were cancelled throughout 2020.
Chili is the top dish among the trending recipes in October 2019. Chili recipes like White Chicken Chili, Favorite Hamburger Stew and Best Ever Beef Chili accounted for 30% of the top 10 recipes that trended in October 2019. To balance out the savory, home cooks also made sweets like Apple Pie and Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Beef dominated as the top meat of the tailgating season among the top recipes in our network, but chicken was a close runner-up, as home cooks continually become more discerning about their health and diet.
While sandwiches don’t appear in the top 10 recipes, the trendline of recipe views for sandwich recipes in October 2019 indicates that they only get more and more popular as the season progresses. Brands that offer classic sandwich ingredients like bread, lunch meat, ketchup, mustard and produce need to ensure that they’re influencing shoppers during this season.
With tailgating comes alcohol consumption. While purchase intent for liquor and wine gradually increases to the end of October, beer stays relatively consistent, with near equivalent peaks on weekends. This indicates that beer is the universal alcoholic beverage of choice during tailgating season, as shoppers turn to beer time and time again consistently.
Happy Halloween
For most families, their major October occasion is Halloween. This season of candy also brings home entertaining opportunities, and these top candies listed below tie into the increased baking that home cooks are doing this season. Baked dessert recipes like Halloween Party Cutout Cookies, Spooky Boo Brownies and Ghost S’mores Dip dominate during this season.
Among the trending candies in our network in October 2019, the top candy is chocolate.
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