Eating & Drinking Occasions Landscape: Spontaneous vs. Planned Occasions
Spontaneous occasions account for 53% of all adult occasions, amounting to 192 billion mouths annually. While these occasions tend to be motivated by hunger, planned occasions involve a complex mix of important needs and emotional contexts. There are even more key differences unpack when it comes to sourcing methods, top retail channels and important food and beverage attributes.
This report distills nearly 15,000 U.S. adult eating and drinking occasions into 6 data-focused dashboards that help foodservice providers, CPG manufacturers and retailers optimize product and marketing efforts to better meet consumer needs across these two occasion types.
Published November 2024 | Report length: 13 pages | U.S. market coverage
Bundle and save:
Purchase any three Eating & Drinking Occasions Landscape reports and receive special pricing: $2,500 for three reports (over 16% off compared to purchasing reports individually). Choose from a variety of topics to suit your occasion-based data needs:
- Alone vs. social occasions
- At-home vs. away-from-home occasions
- Meal vs. snack occasions
- Restaurant-sourced vs. non-restaurant-sourced occasions
- Spontaneous vs. planned occasions
Report (PowerPoint and PDF)
- Hartman Group’s Compass Eating & Drinking Occasions Database is a comprehensive database on American eating patterns, grounded in a complete enumeration of past-24-hour eating and drinking occasions
- Fielded as 3 annual waves (April-May 2023; July-August 2023; September-October 2023) among U.S. adults aged 18-77, nationally representative sample (balanced by age, gender, region, education, income, number of children and race/ethnicity)
- Methodology
- Interpreting the dashboards
- Spontaneous vs. planned occasions dashboards:
- Key details (including size of the prize, social context and attributes)
- Food and beverage details
- Sourcing details
- Need states
- Demographics
- Key takeaways
- Spontaneous vs. planned occasions
- Spontaneous occasions are defined as adult occasions in which the decision about what to have was made less than an hour before eating/drinking.
- Planned occasions are defined as adult occasions in which the decision about what to have was made anywhere between an hour and several days prior to eating/drinking.
- A brief overview of the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when” and “why” of spontaneous and planned occasions
- Detailed dashboards comparing key factors of spontaneous and planned occasions:
- Categories consumed and degrees of preparation
- Trip type, sources, retail channels, purchasing and decision timeframes
- Top need states
- Emotional contexts and occasion characteristics
- Key differences across demographics
- Key takeaways and thought starters for innovation
