Frozen Food Insights: What’s Hot, What’s Not, and What’s Next for Food Brands?

Next week, on the first Thursday of November, is National Men Make Dinner Day.

While some men love to cook, not all do. But, once a year, it’s okay for those SOs out there to “accidentally” drop a hint about this little-known holiday in their emails and social media. Here are some of the rules as listed on the holiday’s official website:

Rule #3: Man, completely un-aided, chooses a ‘published’ recipe from any source, or Internet. Getting the recipe from ‘her’ cookbooks is allowed, but man gets bonus points if the recipe isn’t already somewhere in the house.

Rule #5: Man goes shopping for ‘all’ necessary ingredients. Bonus points if he takes inventory of cupboards and fridges first, before the shopping trip. So you don’t end up with two 64 ounce jars of pickled pimentos.

Rule #12: After the meal, the table is cleared by man, dishwasher is loaded. Man returns to the table for stimulating after-dinner conversation. At this point, man is told how much his meal was appreciated. He, in turn, describes the joys and challenges of the experience. He is given a hug, and his TV remote is returned to him.

What’s new in frozen food trends?

Of course, some men may try to pass off a pre-made frozen meal as their creation. Here are a few delicious examples of frozen foods that just might make the grade:

• Let’s start with Devanco Foods’ MSG Free Chicken Gyros Kits, which received the most votes in the 2021 Best New Frozen Retail Products Contest.
• Stouffer’s Classic Lasagna with Meat & Sauce is—as it says in its name—classic. This one looks like you just took it out of the oven.
• Trader Joe’s Tikka Masala Burritos. In both chicken and vegan styles, these can show off a bit of Dad’s international flair.
• Vermont White Cheddar Mac & Cheese. I like this one because the family might not expect much, but they’ll be won over when they take a bite.

Insights for Frozen Foods Brands: What’s Hot, Not, & Next

The frozen foods market is expected to increase by over 40% from 2018 to 2026 to $366.3 billion worldwide. Consumers are now spending more time at home and, thus, have been more open to trying new foods. The frozen food market is vast, ranging from fast food favorites to high-end, fully home-cooked meals. That’s a lot to keep up with. So how can a frozen foods brand figure out which next hot [frozen] products to make before competitors release it first?

Consumer and market intelligence platforms like Skai are increasingly used by frozen food brands looking to keep a finger on the pulse of what is happening in the category in real-time and get ahead of the latest trends.

Skai collects more data than anyone else relevant to frozen food (social reviews, product listings, ratings, reviews, patents, etc.) so that brands don’t miss a thing. Then, we apply natural language processing so that it’s easy to extract what is happening in the frozen food category and why — and what will happen in the future. And we visualize the data in a way that makes it easy to understand for anyone from Insights, Marketing, Brand, Product Innovation, and more.

Our Frozen Foods category includes data from over:

• 2,600+ products
• 252,000+ consumer discussions
• 91,000+ product reviews
• 8,000+ key opinion leader posts
• 1000+ patents

So what is the data showing us? Let’s take a look! 

Note: this data does not include frozen desserts.

What’s Hot?

• Time of Preparation is undoubtedly one of the reasons why we turn to frozen foods in the first place. Sometimes, the work-and-home balance can be skewed during the pandemic, so a quick meal is an ally of people everywhere. As a result, there has been a 433% increase in consumer reviews over the last 12 months for products that mention this benefit.
• Healthy Diet. Not only do people want their food fast, but they also want it to be good for the body as well. In some cases, frozen meals are part of a more extensive healthy diet lifestyle. There has been a 52% growth in new Healthy Diet frozen food products over the last year and 221 new patents in the previous five. 
• Chicken continues to be one of the most popular meat ingredients in frozen foods. There has been a 19% increase in social media posts about Chicken frozen foods and a 137% increase in mentions of Chicken in the last year in frozen food products reviews.

What’s Not?

• Vegetarian. There has been an 8% drop in innovation with just 23 Vegetarian frozen food products released in the last 12 months and only one patent filed in the previous five years. Additionally, social media buzz has been a bit flat with just a 10% year-over-year increase in Vegetarian frozen foods.
• Yogurt as an ingredient in frozen foods has dropped with no new frozen food products released last year. However, we may see a comeback at some point with 24 new frozen food patents filed in the previous five years that mention Yogurt.
• Egg Free is a benefit that is declining in frozen foods. Social media mentions are down 54% and down 8% in product reviews for posts that mention Egg Free. There weren’t any new products released in the last twelve months and just two new Egg Free frozen food patents over the previous five years.

What’s Next?

• High Protein is one of the critical components to many different diet fads like Keto and Paleo, but also a recommended part of a daily balanced diet. There has been a 136% increase in product reviews in frozen food products that feature High Protein and a 31% increase in social media chatter.
• Indulgence is a pretty buzzy frozen food feature with a 185% growth in new products over the last year. Also, there’s been a 155% increase in consumer product reviews of frozen foods that feature Indulgence.
• Crispy has become a bit of a consumer friendlier term for fried over the last few. So, it makes sense that there would be 55 new patents filed in the previous five years for frozen foods that mention this texture.

Top Frozen Foods Brands (by Most Discussed/Reviewed Brands in August 2021 – # of posts)

The Frozen Foods trend to watch: Fiber

Not all frozen foods are incredibly healthy for us. Some have high calories, high-fat content, high salt, etc. As we saw in the What’s Hot? and What’s Next? sections, many consumers who buy frozen foods are looking to still eat healthily.

Fiber helps regulate the body’s blood sugar and keeps people more satiated than less fibrous foods. It’s recommended that people get 20-30 grams per day for good health, but most Americans get only about 15 grams a day. 

Compared to the number of existing frozen food products that contain fiber, there are nearly 33% more of these items filed in patents over the last five years. Some have made it to market, and some haven’t. But, it looks like there will undoubtedly be more frozen foods that highlight how much fiber they have very soon. 

In addition to the patent filings, there has been a 93% increase in consumer discussions about fiber-focused frozen food products in the last twelve months. 

To find out what’s hot, what’s not, and what’s next in your industry, please reach out today to schedule a brief demo of Skai’s market intelligence platform.

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