New Products Attempting to Get Younger Adults Hooked on Breakfast Foods
ROCKVILLE, Md. — As people tend to love or hate breakfast, the most polarizing meal of the day, and most "breakfast believers" are baby boomers or families with children, companies are producing new products in an effort to expand the market and get younger adults hooked on breakfast foods.
Some of the resulting successful innovations include products that combine aspects of popular breakfast foods for kids and adults into one, according to a new Packaged Facts report, Breakfast: Retail Product Trends and Opportunities in the U.S. 2nd Edition.
A longtime staple of the breakfast foods market, yogurt most recently manifested as part of the Greek yogurt craze. But as Greek yogurt's popularity slows, marketers are looking to drinkable yogurt and yogurt smoothies to take its place at the breakfast table or meal on the go. The product isn't new, but it is one of the fastest growing breakfast foods with a growth rate of 20 percent in the past year.
New drinkable yogurt products have the opportunity to capitalize on the nostalgia that young adults may have for products such as Danimals, while also appealing to their grown-up taste buds, nutritional interests and busy schedules, according to the report.
"There is much room for innovation in breakfast foods," said David Sprinkle, research director for Packaged Facts. "With the reputation for the most important meal of the day, maximizing the reputation of a product's nutrition while highlighting its' convenience, is critical in appealing to demographics across the board."
Cereal continues to be the most popular breakfast food. Adults with young children are most likely to purchase cold cereal, while older generations are most likely to purchase hot cereal.
However, marketers have an opportunity to bridge the hot and cold cereal generation gap, as demonstrated by the explosion in popularity of overnight oats, the market research firm noted. Overnight oats combine the positive nutritional reputation of hot cereal with the convenience and familiarity of cold cereal. Additionally, they have gained appeal across all generational demographics due to promotion in the form of blogging, advertising campaigns and Instagram posts.