Pizza Continues to Bring In the Dough

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Ninety-seven percent of U.S. adults eat pizza, and 93 percent have gotten food from a pizza restaurant in the past 12 months, according to Packaged Facts' newly released report, "The Pizza Market in the U.S.: Foodservice and Retail."

On a monthly basis, 27 percent of U.S. adults get pizza through restaurant delivery/pickup, 26 percent through restaurant dine-in and 24 percent from frozen food cases in their supermarket, the August 2012 Packaged Facts survey revealed. These levels of penetration not only underscore why pizza has been called its own "food group," but also the difficulty in growing sales in this commoditized market.

Sales at pizza restaurants will reach $36.1 billion this year, up 3.8 percent from 2011. At retail, U.S. frozen and refrigerated pizza will register sales of $4.91 billion. Although pizza restaurants are losing share to other restaurant cuisine formats, major pizza chains have continued to grow sales.

On the retail side, private label continues to gain sales and steal share in each of three mass-market pizza segments -- frozen pizza, pizza products and refrigerated pizza. On the store shelves, category growth is primarily on the natural and organic front, the report noted.

David Sprinkle, publisher of Packaged Facts, said the main message to pizza purveyors is to enhance the overall healthfulness of their pizza without sacrificing taste. Menu trends also reveal a wealth of cuisine-driven growth opportunities, such as:

• Push more mileage out of fusion cuisine.
• Use pizza to mainstream a wider variety of leaner proteins.
• Leverage vegetable variety.
• Up the sophistication ante through premium and more exotic natural cheeses and sauce experimentation.

Packaged Facts, a Rockville, Md.-based division of MarketResearch.com, publishes market intelligence on a wide range of consumer market topics, including consumer demographics, shopper insights, health and beauty care, among others.