Current & Post-Pandemic Views on Home-Cooking & Exercise Habits
I really love Bloomberg and stumbled upon this opinion piece from them the other day that takes a look at the healthy/unhealthy habits people have formed during quarantine. A lot of the data below is gathered from embedded links within the article and additional outside research, but the Bloomberg piece is what encouraged me to do some digging in the first place.
i.) Home Cooking — In a Acosta survey conducted of over 2,200 US consumers, more than 55% of people stated that they are eating at home more often since the pandemic began, and only 7% of those said they plan to cook less once everything fully reopens. The study also found that the intention to keep up with home cooking is especially strong among younger demographics, with 43% of respondents stating that they intend to cook at home more after the pandemic is over. Another unrelated study conducted by the University of Washington Health Sciences found that people who cook at home more often, rather than eating out, tend to have healthier overall diets without higher food expenses. The only downfall, really, is the physical process of buying groceries and actually cooking the meal. In the Acosta report above, 65% of respondents said they are tired of ‘cooking’ at home, 69% said they wish they could cook a healthy dinner more quickly and 43% wanted to spend less time planning out their meals. To me, that means that people are interested in eating healthy, but don’t have the time or patience to actually cook. Luckily for them, mealprep/meal delivery platforms shipping groceries and/or premade meals direct-to-consumer have emerged as a perfect alternative and a service I think will have considerable post-pandemic durability.
There are a ton of such services out there. One of my favorites is Sakara — which received $4.8m Series A funding in 2016 from a consortium of funds like Silas Capital, SV Angel and Annox Capital. Sakara has been steadily building its brand and is poised to capitalize on the eat-at-home-but-dont-cook-yourself trend. Boasting a .7% weekly growth rate, Sakara is in the 98th percentile of all growth rates tracked within PitchBook’s database. It has also distinguished itself from the pack by positioning itself as a quasi-medical service whereby their organic food and recipes are the medicine. Everything from Sakara is certified organic and purportedly resolves some sort of health issue from bloating to blotchy skin. Other companies like Come Bien out of Mexico, Daily Harvest, Thistle and Splendid Spoon are also taking advantage of the trend in some form or another. Some are focusing on the convenience factor, but most advertise themselves as healthier tasty alternatives to eating out as well. In addition to the actual meal delivery service, I also think there’s an argument to be made for the value of the data these services collect from customers. Being able to identify which foods are in demand and help food retailers and manufacturers cater to consumers’ needs could lead to reduced food waste and allow the agriculture industry to better understand which types of food to produce/stock and when.
ii.) Exercise Habits — According to a study in the UK, quarantine has had a massive impact on people’s exercise habits. Specifically, older folks in the 65+ range became more active throughout quarantine and have increased their activity levels even as lockdowns have eased. Another study looking at 450,000 geographically and demographically random users of the Argus app showed that overall step count was significantly reduced in the first few months of the pandemic, but has been on the rise ever since. I think at first, everyone was probably scared to leave the house and go for a walk/run around the neighborhood, but as people settled into the new normal they actually benefitted from more autonomy over their schedules and less time devoted to commuting etc, and were able to build in habitual exercise time. Moreover, I think that exercise has transitioned from a ‘want-to’ activity to maintain physique to ‘have-to’ activity to center oneself. I’m speculating that that trend will continue regardless of whether folks are working from home or in the office because exercise is becoming more of a cathartic activity that people increasingly rely on to decompress. Add in the fact that the older generation (usually more senior in organizations and have greater ability to manage their professional schedules) are leading the charge and you have a recipe for continued adherence to healthy exercise habits even post-COVID. Work/life directives come from more senior employees, and I think their interest in maintaining healthy exercise levels will trickle down to the younger population.
The New York Times sums this idea up well: “the message of the available research seems to be that we may all want to monitor how much we are moving to help assure that we are exercising enough.” The best way to monitor your exercise? Wearables. I think the quarantine trends will actually have a positive impact on the adoption of HealthTech wearables once we’re all allowed to leave the house again.
