Eating & Drinking Occasions Landscape 2024: Underlying Currents of Change
While consumers’ eating routines and behaviors have largely stabilized since the height of the pandemic, the story of American eating is rarely static. As major life events take place, consumer habits, priorities and needs continue to evolve. Understanding differences in how eating behaviors shift across the day and by generational cohorts — as they did in 2024 — is key to finding new opportunities.
Eating & Drinking Occasions Landscape 2024 provides an in-depth look into how consumers ate and drank in 2024 compared to 2023, while also looking back at the past 6 years to identify key shifts — and subsequent stabilizations — among U.S. adults overall to help food and beverage companies optimize their efforts.
Published February 2025 | Report length: 83 pages | U.S. market coverage
Report (PowerPoint and PDF)
- Hartman’s Compass Eating & Drinking Occasions Database is a comprehensive database on American eating patterns, grounded in a complete enumeration of past-24-hour eating occasions
- Fielded as 3 annual waves (April-May 2024; July-August 2024; September-October 2024) among U.S. adults aged 18-74, national sample (balanced by age, gender, region, education, income, number of children, and race/ethnicity)
- Including 6 years of trended data (2019-2024)
- Methodology and introduction
- Occasion context: understanding the when, where and with whom of eating & drinking occasions
- Sourcing and preparation: understanding where food and beverages are sourced and how they are prepared
- Consumer needs: understanding the why behind eating & drinking occasions
- 8 daypart occasion dashboards
- Key takeaways & implications
- Comprehensive insights on 2024 eating and drinking occasions, including key differences between generations and dayparts
- Dashboards (4 slides each) for each of the 8 eating occasions dayparts: early-morning snack, breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, after-dinner snack, and late-night meal/snack
- Key takeaways and thought starters for innovation
