Health is becoming more ingrained in UK shoppers’ choices, according to Worldpanel’s Clara Tucker, as flat consumer confidence fails to dent a growing health trend
Despite continued economic uncertainty in the UK market, the fresh produce sector is well placed to take advantage of “a few shoots of positivity”, according to Clara Tucker, consumer insight director at Worldpanel By Numerator, speaking at Festival Of Fresh in Ely, Cambridgeshire on 10 June.
“We’ve seen some real wage growth and a minimum wage increase,” they said, “and we perhaps haven’t seen quite the swings and uncertainty of the last five years, but clearly it’s still a difficult picture.”
Despite the current challenges, however, health continues to be the main driver of purchases. “We know that health has typically, historically, been aligned with consumer confidence,” they noted. “Over the last five years or so, with some of the challenges we’ve faced, these things have aligned quite closely: confidence goes down, and then health becomes less important. But that has actually started to change.”
Although consumer confidence has been flat for the last 18 months, health has continued to grow in importance. “More servings of food are being chosen for health reasons,” said Tucker. “This shows that health is becoming more ingrained in our choices.”
They argued that produce was uniquely positioned to benefit from the trend. While just over a quarter of servings overall are consumed for health reasons, the figure rises to 80 per cent for fruit.
The produce sector is regularly growing by approximately £1bn a year, they revealed. “Slightly under that this year, but it’s an unprecedented size now,” they said. “Generally fruit and vegetables have been outperforming the total market.”
Tucker highlighted the products with the biggest year-on-year volume change in vegetables and fruit. “You will see some smaller categories due to the smaller base size,” they qualified, “but you can really start to get a sense of what is resonating with shoppers.”
In the top ten for vegetables were ginger, chilies and rocket – flavourful, spicy types of veg, they explained. “And then celery and cucumber show the healthy snacking trend starting to come through in this top ten,” they continued.
The top ten for fruit showed growth in various tropical fruits, including lychees from a low base, but Tucker chose to highlight the continued growth of berries.
“Three berry types have made it into the top ten,” they revealed. “Within blackberries, we’ve seen more lines coming into the market, blueberries in particular have gained a lot of popularity in terms of breakfast occasions, for example, and strawberries are also coming through in the top ten.”
Taste, of course, remains paramount for shoppers, who have shown a willingness to pay extra for it in spite of the economic constraints. “When prices rose in 2023, the differential between the standard tier and the value tier reduced significantly,” said Tucker, “and even though baskets were challenged in terms of cost, people still chose the standard option rather than value.”
