UK Breakfast Cereals – Market Dynamics 2025
Positive nutrition plays a key role in breakfast cereals choice, both for adults and children.
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THE MARKET
- Snapshot – market size and forecast
- Weak consumer confidence keeps food spend under scrutiny
- Graph 1: financial wellbeing and confidence indices, 2019-25
- Food and cereals inflation has come down from 2023 highs, but is rising again
- Graph 2: consumer price inflation for all food and cereals, 2022-25
- HFSS advertising restrictions delayed until January 2026
- Strong consumer interest in healthy eating, but room for treats
- Graph 3: how often people try to eat healthily, 2018-25
- Population growth to support demand for breakfast cereals
- Graph 4: population, by age, 2020, 2025 and 2030
- Market size and forecast
- Slow volume decline and low value growth expected for 2025-30
- Graph 5: retail value forecast for breakfast cereals, 2019-30
- Volume sales show small falls in both segments
- Graph 6: retail value and volume sales of breakfast cereals, by segment, 2023-25
- Own-label has gained market share, but only slowly
- Graph 7: leading brands’ sales in the cold cereals segment, by value, 2022/23-24/25
- Graph 8: leading brands’ sales in the hot cereals segment, by value, 2022/23-24/25
- Manufacturers outside the top three grow sales in cold cereals
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THE CONSUMER
- Usage of breakfast cereals
- Vast majority eat breakfast cereals
- Graph 9: types of breakfast cereals typically eaten, 2025
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PRODUCT, INNOVATION AND MARKETING
- Increase in category advertising spend in 2024
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APPENDIX
- Market definition
- The market
- Forecast methodology
- Forecast methodology – fan chart
- Retail sales and forecast for breakfast cereals
- Retail sales and forecast of breakfast cereals – volumes
- Graph 10: forecast for retail volume sales of breakfast cereals, 2019-30
- Market forecast and prediction intervals (values)
- Market forecast and prediction intervals (volumes)
- Trends in the population age structure
- Market share
- Cold cereals – value brand sales
- Cold cereals – volume brand sales
- Cold cereals – value manufacturer sales
- Cold cereals – volume manufacturer sales
- Hot cereals – value brand sales
- Hot cereals – volume brand sales
- Hot cereals – value manufacturer sales
- Hot cereals – volume manufacturer sales
- Advertising and marketing
- Advertising spending on breakfast cereals by media type
- Advertising spending on breakfast cereals by advertiser
- The consumer
- Consumer research questions
- Consumer research methodology
- Repertoire analysis methodology
- Mintel Spark
- Nielsen Ad Intel coverage
- Abbreviations and terms
- Abbreviations
- HFSS is defined by nutrient profile
This Market Dynamics report features market data extracted from Mintel’s UK Breakfast Cereals Market Report 2025. Giving you direct access to key market information and analysis from our category experts. This report is ideal for those looking for a topline summary of the UK cereals market. The full report is available to purchase here.
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