Source: USDA'S ECONOMIC RESEARCH SERVICE, 12/29/17



Highlights:
• For all generations (Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials), households with higher incomes have larger food-at-home expenditures and spend more on fruits, vegetables, red meats, and sugar and candies.
• Millennials shop at grocery stores the least on a monthly basis, with each preceding generation making more frequent trips.
• Millennial households—at all income levels—devote more of their at-home food spending to prepared foods than the other three generations.

Millennials, those born between 1981 and the mid-2000s, are now the largest living generation—surpassing Baby Boomers—in the United States. Their purchasing behavior greatly influences the current retail landscape, as companies try to accommodate Millennial preferences. Studies have found that Millennials are distinctly different from older generations in that they are more racially diverse, more highly educated, and more internet savvy. Most are early in their working lives and single or just starting their own families. Their grocery shopping habits are likely to change as they age, but current differences from older generations could have implications for future food demand.

Are the food shopping habits of Millennials different from other generations? A new ERS study analyzed a recent year of grocery store data to see how Millennial purchases differ from those of older shoppers. The study found that Millennials, on average, devote less of their food budgets to grocery store (food at home) purchases and make fewer trips to the grocery store than the other generations examined. Millennials are demanding healthier and fresher food—including fruits and vegetables—when making food-at-home purchases, and they place a higher preference on convenience than do other generations.

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