Soup is the specialty food category most impacted by inflation, said David Lockwood, consumer market research and strategy consultant and co-author of the Specialty Food Association’s State of the Specialty Food Industry Report, 2022-2023 Edition, during a presentation at the Summer Fancy Food Show, Sunday. While the category's dollar sales growth for the four-week period ending April 17, 2022 was 15.8 percent, unit growth was -5 percent, indicating a 20.8 percent gap.
“As things get tighter, consumers look to trade out or down. In tough times, soup does very well but now inflation is so high that quite a few are trading down or trading out of the category,” Lockwood said.
He noted that inflation is hitting shelf-stable, center-store categories the hardest. When it comes to rising specialty food prices, soup is followed by shelf stable juices (18.8 percent gap between dollar and unit sales), soda and carbonated beverages (14.7 percent gap), chocolate and other confectionery (14.4 percent), refrigerated pasta (14.4 percent), plant-based meat (12.8 percent), water (12.2 percent), chips, pretzels, snacks (12.1 percent), and coffee and hot cocoa, non-RTD (12.1 percent).
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