In 2024, the fresh food industry continued to encounter the challenge of global inflationary pressure. Going forward, it faces economic and climate change uncertainty, negatively impacting supply and prices; however, affordability and health trends play in its favour. This report offers a global overview of the fresh food industry, highlighting major trends, regional shifts, category trends and key developments.
This report comes in PPT.
Volume sales of fresh food are forecast to continue growing. The increasing global population, demand for healthy food and key category affordability (in the face of an ongoing tough consumer spending environment) are all key factors contributing to growth.
Vegetables and fruits are set to continue to be the largest categories by far. Both are forecast to grow over 2024-2029, by 12.6% and 17.3%, respectively. Nuts, the smallest category, has the strongest forecast growth rate, of 20.2%, as nuts meet demand for both convenient food/snacks and healthy eating.
The largest region for total volume sales of fresh food is Asia Pacific, with China and India the key countries in terms of sales and forecast growth. India became the most populous nation in the world in 2023, (overtaking China), and has the highest proportion of vegetarians of any country.
Health trends in food strongly favour fresh foods – for example, consumers are increasingly wary of processing, which drives interest away from packaged food and towards fresh. Also, research so far into the small but increasing uptake of weight loss drugs suggests that users drop categories such as snacks and baked goods, but not fresh food.
Supply is a significant and ongoing concern. Trade tariffs spearheaded by the US, plus the impact of climate change on harvests – and resulting protectionism – are drivers of significant uncertainty regarding the availability and cost of fresh food.
Fresh Food refers only to fresh uncooked and unprocessed foods (packaged and unpackaged). Packaged sugar products and natural sweeteners (e.g. brown sugar, table sugar, molasses) are also included. For Fresh Food, we research total sales across distribution channels including retail, foodservice and institutions. For a selected 18 markets, we have a breakdown of total fresh food sales according to the following formats: • Retail • Foodservice sales • Institutional sales Retail Retail sales is defined as sales through all legal establishments primarily engaged in the sale of fresh, packaged and prepared foods for home preparation and consumption. Retail sales excludes sales to hotels, restaurants, cafés, duty free sales and institutional sales (canteens, prisons/jails, hospitals, army, etc). Our retail definition excludes the purchase of food products from foodservice outlets for consumption off-premises, eg grilled chicken/meat/fish bought from counters of cafés/bars. This falls under foodservice sales. For foodservice, we capture all sales to foodservice outlets, regardless of whether the products are eventually consumed on-premise or off-premise. We estimate sales through the following channels: Modern Grocery Retailers • Supermarkets • Hypermarkets • Discounters • Convenience stores • Forecourt retailers Traditional Grocery Retailers • Independent small grocers • Food/Drink/Tobacco Specialists • Other grocery retailers (morning/speciality/open/wet/farmers’ markets, stalls and kiosks, etc) Non-grocery retailers • Health and beauty specialist retailers • Other non-grocery retailers Non-store retailers • Homeshopping • Internet retailing • Vending • Direct selling Foodservice Foodservice sales are defined as sales TO consumer foodservice outlets that serve the general public in a non-captive environment. In other words, this means that the foodservice volumes track sales of all fresh food going into restaurant kitchens, regardless of what the restaurant actually does with that food. Foodservice outlets include cafés/bars, FSR (full-service restaurants), fast food, 100% home delivery/takeaway, self-service cafeterias and street stalls/kiosks. Sales to semi-captive foodservice outlets are also included. This describes outlets located in leisure, travel and retail environments. • Retail refers to foodservice units located in retail outlets such as department stores, shopping malls, shopping centres, super/hypermarkets etc. • Leisure refers to foodservice units located in leisure establishments such as museums, health clubs, cinemas, theatres, theme parks and sports stadiums. • Travel refers to foodservice units based in airports, rail stations, coach stations, motorway service stations offering gas facilities etc. Institutional sales Institutional sales is defined as sales to captive foodservice units that serve captive populations such as in hospitals, schools, prisons, military camps, hotels, hostels, nursing homes, homes for elderly people, religious houses, etc.
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