Many millenials are forgoing cereal and other sit-down breakfast options because it’s too much work to clean up after they eat.
That’s the conclusion by by the Mintel firm, which said in its 2015 report that almost 40 percent of the millenials surveyed called cereal an “inconvenient breakfast choice” because of the clean-up afterward.
“Breakfast cereal, both as a cultural marker and a profit center, is at a crossroads,” reported the New York Times this week.
“Younger consumers are not as attached to cold cereal for breakfast as their forebears.… They either don’t eat breakfast at all, or eat it somewhere other than home. And when they do eat breakfast, a bowl of cold cereal is often replaced by hot grains, smoothies, yogurt or breakfast sandwiches.”
Euromonitor came to the same conclusion in a “Breakfast Cereals in the US” report, also published last year.
“Led by millennials, time-pressed consumers continue to turn away from sit-down breakfast options in favour of more portable snacks they can eat while on the go. Sometimes called the ’snackification' of US food, several smaller but rapidly-growing categories are emerging to challenge breakfast cereals for share of the breakfast meal occasion,” it said in its summary.
“Products like snack bars, Greek yoghurt and even biscuits (ie Belvita) offer a high-protein, energising breakfast that can be consumed on the go, and saw strong growth over the review period. At the same time, foodservice outlets continue to expand their breakfast offerings, with new players like Taco Bell offering breakfast for the first time in 2014. Against this fierce competition, breakfast cereals struggled to remain relevant in 2015, with retail volume sales falling by 2 percent.”
Some followed the news by calling millenials “too lazy” to eat cereal, but some spoke out against the reports.
“Now before you go and brand all of us as inherently lazy... I feel the need to defend myself—and millennials—a little bit here. I love a good bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios or Frosted Mini Wheats, but my mornings are so busy that I usually don’t get a chance to eat breakfast before leaving the house,” wrote Kayla Samoy for USA Today.
“Instead I grab a much more convenient yogurt parfait or muffin from the cafeteria at work. So do many of the other millennials in the survey.”
