The food and beverage subscription industry are robust in America, offering incredible services that can introduce consumers to a wide variety of culinary experiences. Whether a person wants to prepare exciting meals without grocery shopping, eat more fruits and vegetables or have access to ingredients or varietals not native to their area, subscription services seem to be the answer for many. But we wondered, is the prevalence of these subscription services a holdover of pandemic behavior, and if so, could they be waning in popularity?
Using the PureSpectrum Insights Platform, we polled Americans who have or previously bought food or wine subscriptions to better understand their buying habits. They instantly proved our pandemic hypothesis wrong, 86% of respondents had subscribed to a meal kit service before 2020 and 65% had also previously belonged to a wine club.
Favorite Subscription Brands
When asked which meal service they had tried, brand choices were diverse but the front runners were Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Freshly, and Home Chef. Preferences also varied when respondents were asked for a favorite meal subscription service. Hello Fresh was the most popular with 29% of respondent votes, followed by 13% who favored Blue Apron. However, when filtering by gender, we saw that more men preferred Blue Apron to Hello Fresh.
Source: PureSpectrum Insights Platform
Blue Apron also won as the favorite wine club of our respondents, no matter what their gender. Men next favored the WSJwine while women voted Naked Wines as their second most popular preference
What Americans Like About Subscriptions
74% of our respondents currently have a meal subscription service. 67% of those cooks feel that meal kits have made them better chefs. Similarly, 69% of wine subscribers still have their memberships and 71% of these wine drinkers feel their club helps them try new wine varietals. 65% also now feel more knowledgeable about wine.
It’s no secret that Americans appreciate convenience when it comes to putting food on the table. 89% of our respondents say they at least occasionally buy frozen meals and 85% also have groceries delivered to their homes. The ease that food and wine subscriptions offer cooks and wine drinkers access to new ingredients and culinary experiences seem to ensure that this buying behavior will only continue to increase in popularity.
Interested in getting further details about this data set? Email us at marketing@purespectrum.com
Want to learn more about running your own survey? See how easy it is on our Insights Platform.
Methodology
PureSpectrum interviewed 160 online respondents on September 2, 2021, using the PureSpectrum Insights Platform. The platform is integrated with the PureSpectrum Marketplace which combines proprietary measurement tools and third-party data validation to quickly collect high-quality insights. The study fielded in less than an hour and targeted respondents within the United States and consisted of a general population audience of 18+ years old. Only respondents 21+ were asked about wine subscription services. This study uses a 95% confidence level to examine the data.