From Bundled Deals to Bigger Snacks: How America Ate in 2024

If the year in food 2024 could be summed up in one word, it might be “weariness.” While in prior years the food landscape was one of renewed hope, with consumers flocking back to restaurants post-pandemic and upping their spending on packaged goods, this year everything feels a little more… perfunctory.

Sure, fast food and snack companies are releasing new limited-time offerings, but the year was lacking in eye-catching innovation. And while prices on items like eggs and milk leveled out a bit, the cost of everything else, from Big Macs to boxed cereal, wore down the American populace.

Related: The 7 Social Media Trends, Tips, and Myths Our Readers Loved the Most in 2024

Amidst those woes, however, some interesting consumer behaviors caught the attention of the food industry. Here are some of the trends that defined eating in 2024, and where the future of food might be headed.

Bundles galore

In discussing both fast food and grocery trends in 2024, it’s hard to avoid talking about The Almighty Bundle. Quick-service restaurants embraced it first, with McDonald’s $5 meal deal  and Burger King’s $5 combo offering consumers the exciting prospect of value (fast food had, by June, already begun to feel like a luxury thanks to climbing prices).

Other major players soon followed suit: Wendy’s released a $3 breakfast bundle, Taco Bell offered a $7 Luxe Cravings Box, and even Starbucks got in on the game with sandwich-and-drink pairings starting at $5. Some were flash-in-the-pan promotions, but others, like the McDonald’s option, have been extended.

Next came the grocery bundling, as Target, Aldi, Walmart, and Lidl competed to offer the most inexpensive Thanksgiving haul with the most ingredients for a feast. Walmart is arguably the champion of this approach, as its ready-made online shopping lists offer consumers an occasion to buy more than they might have picked up in piecemeal fashion. In addition to its highly touted Thanksgiving bundle, Walmart offered summer barbecue bundles and “Game Day Baskets” with all the ingredients for watching football with friends.

Supersized snacks are combatting shrinkflation woes

Though many grocery staples are down from their peak prices in 2022 and 2023, we’re still contending with food costs that have remained higher than our wages, and there’s a certain fatigue that pervades our spending habits. Thus, companies tried to spur spending not by lowering prices, but by taking big, performative swings to demonstrate their value.

In some cases this led to products that were literally larger. This year, Reese’s debuted several new iterations of its Big Cup this year, including Caramel and Chocolate Lava. The brand also debuted a size even larger than the Big Cup: the Jumbo Cup, clocking in at a whopping 2.8 ounces.

Chips Ahoy, too, understood the need to go big. The brand rolled out a flashy campaign in March touting its new and “MMMproved” recipe, and in September, it bucked tradition by creating the Big Chewy Chips Ahoy!, the largest cookie it has ever produced and the only individually wrapped offering in the portfolio.

Eating to live

Over the past couple years, we’ve seen the steep climb in so-called functional food and beverages, or items that promise an additional benefit, whether it’s boosting one’s mood, relieving stress, contributing to gut health, or stimulating the metabolism. The reason this category has seen so much growth is not simply that people want to be healthy — it’s that they have specific objectives within their healthy lifestyle. Cargill, America’s largest food corporation, has dubbed this “eating to live.”

Among the fad diets of the recent past, the “healthy” eating demanded by those diets promised “health” for its own sake, as both the means and the end (however dubious the methods and results might be). Now, Cargill says, there’s more emphasis on the idea that “I’m eating healthy so that I can do X, Y, and Z.” Consumers are thinking ahead to their future, planning for longevity, mental acuity, and lifelong vitality. Functional food and beverages, then, can feel like a way to achieve those goals.

“Notice how many consumers pick up packages to read the labels now,” Keith Albright, insights and analytics leader for Cargill’s Food Solutions North America, tells Food & Wine. “People are spending more time doing this than before because they want the food to align with their values.”

Mike Van Houten, head of consumer and marketplace insights at Nestlé, also points to this shift in consumers’ food choices.

“This was a year where the definition of health and wellness really expanded,” Van Houten said. “Lots of people want to have their food work harder for them… protein, macros, things you now have an eye on when you’re going through every aisle in a grocery store.” Additionally, the term “health” might now sooner refer to mental health and emotional well-being — concepts that were not previously tied as closely to the food and drinks we consume.

Eating what we want, without compromise

In keeping with that redefined notion of health and wellbeing, consumers in 2024 were, on the whole, less willing to compromise in their food choices.

“The abstinence of something is not really the lead way to do things anymore,” Albright said. He explains the prevailing 2024 consumer mindset thusly: “If I want to indulge, I’m going to go all in. For example, Thanksgiving will have indulgent dishes, maybe [some] made a little bit fresher or healthier. But if that’s not possible, I’m not going to apologize for my full-fat recipes.” This, Albright explains, is “the enactment of a value.”

“There’s a tension between health and indulgence,” he added. “There’s no middle ground.”

And what about those “responsible” food choices? Well, they shouldn’t taste responsible. “Taste is still the number one driver, even in the case of better-for-you food,” said Albright.

Chicken, chicken everywhere

As of this writing, Taco Bell is testing chicken nuggets for a limited time, McDonald’s is offering 10 McNuggets for $1, and chicken sandwiches are overshadowing burgers at the world’s biggest fast food chain. The almost entirely chicken-finger-focused Raising Cane’s is experiencing some of the most stratospheric growth in the fast food sector, and in a possible attempt to replicate that success, KFC has launched an entire spin-off restaurant concept called Saucy. Long story short, chicken is the cheap, abundant industry darling that consumers have flocked to amidst higher beef prices. This trend shows no signs of slowing down in 2025.

Where will we go in 2025?

Van Houten tells Food & Wine that global and fusion flavors were already steeply on the rise pre-pandemic, and they’ve become even more hotly in demand now that ever more social media platforms can spark interest in new food fads, trends, and memes faster than ever before. Look no further than the proliferation of chili crisp brands to see how products can leap across oceans and alter the North American market for the better.

In the wildly popular and still growing functional food and beverage sector, protein is still king. Not only because it’s a key callout for those who want to build muscle or feel fuller for longer — it’s also, as Albright points out, an increasingly necessary dietary staple as more of the population adopts a plant-based lifestyle.

And unfortunately, food cost will also shape our eating habits in 2025, but we’ll do our level best to consume as much of what we want as possible. This will look different for everyone: Maybe some folks will commit to cheaper milk while still buying the pricey eggs or stopping after one drink at the bar instead of two.

“There are trade-offs within the occasion, but the occasion is still there,” Albright explains. “It’s a precision game for each individual.”

Read the original article on Food & Wine