"Food and drink benefits from being an affordable gift choice. Customisation, personalisation and a wider range of premium food/drink gift packs are opportunities."
Richard Caines - Principal Analyst, UK Food & Drink Research
Food and drink gift buying has proved resilient to the income squeeze. In fact, reported buying of food and drink to gift has climbed to 81% since 2022. This is due to the majority of consumers seeing these as a good choice for an affordable gift, and only a third seeing low price as a top priority when gift buying.
Gratitude is a powerful theme for food and drink brands to focus on in the context of gifting. Almost three-quarters of food/drink gift givers bought these as a thank you. Directly delivered gift selections hold potential, as six in ten of ‘thank you’ gift buyers had bought selections/hampers, and over half had gifts delivered to the recipient.
Attractive packaging remains a key feature in unlocking gifting sales in food/drink. Over a third of food/drink gift buyers are influenced by this. Attractive packaging is more important to those describing their financial situation as struggling. This highlights that ensuring that products look gift-worthy is particularly relevant while real incomes remain under pressure.
This report looks at consumer behaviours and attitudes towards food and drink products bought as gifts. The report covers sweet and savoury foods, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
This report was written by Richard Caines. Richard is a Senior Food & Drink Analyst at Mintel, responsible for researching and writing a wide range of UK food and drink reports, as well as writing Analyst Insights discussing key launches, marketing activity and trends. Richard has more than 25 years of experience in market research, including a number of different analyst roles at Mintel.
Food and drink benefits from being an affordable gift choice. Customisation, personalisation and a wider range of premium food/drink gift packs are opportunities.
Richard Caines
Principal Analyst, UK Food & Drink Research
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