Part
01
of one
Part
01
What are the pain points in cooking at home?
Hello! Thanks for your question about the pain points of cooking at home. The short the short version is that the biggest pain points for home cooks are the price of ingredients, the time it takes to cook a meal, and the lack of confidence due to having little experience cooking. Below you will find a deep dive of my findings. I enjoyed working on this research project, since I am a food blogger who often tries to help home cooks solve these pain points.
PRICE OF FRESH/HEALTHY INGREDIENTS
A study by retail analyst Kantar Worldpanel showed that cooking at home in the UK is on a rapid decline, especially among the lower class. As reported by The Guardian, "Those whose food budgets are under the most pressure, especially families earning under £25,000 a year, as poorer consumers opt for cheap and "filling" prepared foods on offer in supermarket price promotions rather than fresh produce." Worldpanel found that families look for special offers to save money, but are often presented with unhealthy, pre-made options. In this same article, the author reported that a third of all sugar and saturated fat purchased by UK consumers was sold through these offers.
TIME
According to Worldpanel's study, time may also be a major pain point for home cooks. He found that two decades ago, people spent an average of 60 minutes to prepare a meal. Today, the average is 32 minutes, according to Worldpanel, which suggests that busy home cooks just don't have the time to spend on recipes that require more meal prep.
A similar study that tracked UK cooking habits from 1980 to 2012, as reported by The Daily Mail, found a similar result - that average time spent cooking dinner has dropped from 60 minutes to just 34 minutes, on average. The Daily Mail also spoke to Tam Fry from The National Obesity Forum, who said, " These days, you often have two working parents who after a long day of work do not feel like cooking."
A 2015 survey found that 43% of people in Great Britain say that they do not have the time to cook, which also supports the idea that time is a major pain point.
CONFIDENCE
Matt Van Horn, the founder of Lyft, and Nikhil Bhogal, the inventor of many of the Apple camera’s technology patent, believes that one of the major pain points for home cooks is the stress of meal prep due to the guesswork that goes into home cooking. In June 2015, their team announced June Intelligent Oven, specifically to relieve this stress. Specifically, they believe that home cooks want to not only cook faster, but also have the confidence that the end result will taste great.
People who don't have confidence in their results may feel this way due to lack of experience. A Good Food channel survey revealed that 10% of women have never cooked a roast, around 16% say they cannot bake a cake, and 20% report struggling to make a basic curry. A whopping 80% say that they cook the same meals over and over again. On average, those who responded only feel confident cooking about 7 different meals from scratch, while their mothers, on average, could cook twice as many. 10% of those who responded can only cook 1 or 2 meals from scratch.
To wrap it up, my research shows that the pain points for home chefs are similar to pain points in other areas - price, time, and the lack of consumer confidence. Your client may especially be interested in the "lack of confidence" section, since it sounds like the business venture they are considering would aim to teach a younger generation cooking skills they need to feel confident that the end results will taste good. Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!