Fast and Fabulous: Tap into The Billion-Dollar Gourmet Convenience Market

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What comes to mind when you hear “gourmet’?

Probably not convenience food.

But that’s exactly what today’s consumers desire — premium morsels served in ultra-convenient formats.

• Grab-and-go meal sales have risen 72% post-pandemic
• Meal-kit delivery services are a $20B+ market, and growing
• Retail snack sales rose to $214B in 2023

Convenience foods and meal kit delivery services grow as consumers seek out easier dining experiences. Source: Statista

Meanwhile, consumers are hungry for new tastes and global flavors. Millennials and Gen Zers are leading the hunt for unique, international ingredients. 

One such example is ube, or purple yam, a staple of Filipino cuisine. With an aesthetic appeal and many health benefits, it was the ingredient to watch in 2023, and has been named a leading flavor in 2024 as well. 

Ube-tter not miss out on this! Source: Foodaciously

Ube is just one of many up-and-coming ingredients with global influences.

The trend is clear: Consumers are busy and want to taste the best, fast.

For entrepreneurs, we see two big areas of opportunities:

1. Zoom in on The Gourmet

You can make serious dough by elevating everyday foods into a gourmet experience.

🥨 Premium Snack Attack

Snacks, the ultimate convenience food, are ripe for disruption.

Retail snack sales in 2023 rose to ~$214B. 

They take up 27% of all food & bev sales in the US, and 54% of consumers are snacking to treat themselves.

Consumers want artisanal, crafty snacks that make them feel good. So start sprinkling in unique flavors, ingredients and presentation to premium-ize your snack offerings.

You don’t have to look at Pinterest to know gourmet cookies are all the rage – just look out your window every time a new Crumbl Cookies opens up. What began as a single family-owned bakery in 2017 has exploded to 800+ stores in North America.

The Viera, FL Crumbl opening touted long lines and heat exhaustion. Give the people cookies!

A healthy spin will also get you noticed: Demand for healthier snacks is up ~252% from 2022 to 2023. Pitch to offices or college campuses, where busy workers and students are time-strapped to track down healthy munchies.

🥫 Get Saucy

The hot sauce market will heat up to ~$5.1B by 2030, making it fertile ground for bold flavor experiments.

Sell a subscription box of artisanal sauces – hot or otherwise – from different regions. Tag on an app introducing the ingredients of each sauce, their origins, and the recipes they’re best paired with (we see quizzes, merch, socials… content galore 😍).

Brightland, a seller of artisanal oil, vinegar and honey, has 147k followers on Instagram and rakes in $5.3m in annual revenue.

Dip in the sweet, lucrative sauce biz. Source: Brightland

🍱 Nourish The Young

School lunches famously suck. As more health-conscious Millennials become parents, they’ll want better options for their children. 

Meal delivery services are popular among busy adults, but not many are focused on kids. 

CookUnity, a meal delivery service, lets you choose chef-made meals from a menu of diverse global cuisines. Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

Build a “CookUnity Junior” like Nurture Life (which raised ~$7m) that targets children’s nutritional needs.

Make it available to parents, and partner with local K-12 schools to offer convenient, healthy and diverse lunch options. Include fun tidbits so the munchkins keep coming back for more (think: Happy (but healthy) Meals).

Boost their well-being and elevate their palates – no one’s too young to be a gourmet. 

2. Nibble on Nearby Niches

If you’re not in the food business, don’t worry – there are still plenty of ways to cash in:

🎯 Offer marketing services to help new brands build competitive moat in the fast gourmet market, and help older brands reinvent themselves.

🎨 Illustrate aesthetic snack packages and sauce bottles. Heck, even design storefronts for boutique retailers or supermarkets that focus on the gourmet experience. Sprinkle in a little AI magic… the sky’s the limit.

🗞️ Start a newsletter or YouTube channel to introduce global ingredients to everyday consumers. Sample the foods yourself to add a personal touch. It pays to tap into people’s curiosity and desire for new experiences.

However you slice it, the gourmet convenience market is a cornucopia of mouth-watering opportunities. So go on, take a bite!