Meal times, as you may know, tell you a lot about a countries culture. In India, meals have traditionally been the time for family gatherings. Dinner especially is a meal that most families will try to have together.
And that’s why the changing eating habits of people are an interesting indicator.
Not only do these trends represent an opportunity for companies in the food business but they also represent a larger corollary to the changing consumption patterns and demographics of our country.
The number of orders in the breakfast to brunch period — call it 6 AM — 11 AM, are going up. For food aggregators and producers like Swiggy/ Zomato or Faasos — the implications on menu design are compelling. I imagine that they will have to push more morning foods — whatever that means in different parts of the country — in order to ride and grow this trend. That people are even using these platforms to find food in the morning says a lot about the changing habits of urban Indian households.
In fact, if you look carefully, the timings for what have been considered traditional meal times for lunch (11 AM to 3 PM) and dinner (7 PM to 11 PM) are the only categories to have witnessed a decline in % of orders placed during the day.
The most significant change, perhaps, is the increase in late night delivery orders. The percentage of orders in this bucket has gone up nearly 3X over a one and a half year period. For aggregators and food producers this is a great opportunity to cater to, just by virtue of being available — there are significant pockets of opportunity they can exploit.
The shift in meal timings is almost a secular trend to later eating times of the day. All 3 meals are being had later — if you look at the meal times between 3 PM and 7 PM — you will notice an increase in order percentages.
In my opinion, these are a result of 2 things — changing social constructs and the changing work life balance in people’s lives.
India was earlier less metropolitan, i.e. we remained heavily reliant on familial/ home based solutions to hunger. Eating out was the exception, not the norm. This is changing. People are increasingly living on their own, in nuclear families rather than joint family homes that were the norm earlier. Leading to a change in the facilities they have access to and the benefits they enjoyed under traditional set ups.
The second feature factor leading to this change is equally interesting. The changing eating habits are a result of the shift in work life balances that people used to have.
It is now work > life.
People are spending more time at work and as a result getting less time to spend on themselves. While globally, there is a movement to balance the work/ life equation in favour of life> work; In India, where we have so many people vying for each position, the skew will only worsen.
So while this generation may seem over worked compared to their predecessors, they are also more pampered and spoilt for choice. These are champions of the on demand economy. They would much rather pay a bit extra for the convenience of having everything ‘non-core’ delivered to them than shift focus from their own goals.
Thanks for your time,
Ashish Kapoor
Team KG
P.S. One step forward and two steps back. Maybe that’s the way it is with all start-ups but in yesterday’s newsletter — we uploaded the wrong file by mistake. This was a stupid and unforgivable mistake. To the people who were only interested in the top 30 Apps — there was no change to that data set. To the people who purchased this file before 5 PM yesterday — the correct file has already been e-mailed to you all. To those who are thinking of purchasing it now and purchased it post 5 pm yesterday you have received the correct file. The amended newsletter and files are also accessible here.
Originally published at kalagato.com.
