As grocery prices remain top of mind, family meals are helping shoppers gain greater control over food spending while delivering meaningful value at home.
By: David Fikes, Executive Director, FMI Foundation
Some of us believe we must generate a certain level of anxiety to help the plane we’re on produce the lift necessary for take-off. This group is painfully aware of the dynamic tension that exists between what we are concerned about and what we can control. We may be worried about something, but the level of that concern is governed by how much control we feel we have over the circumstances. More control lessens the concern; less control fuels the concern.
FMI’s most recent consumer trends research reveals that shoppers are feeling less in control of their spending on food purchased at the grocery store and therefore shopper concern about grocery store food prices has risen. In fact, after several months of improvement (more control, less concern) concern and control have returned to the levels recorded in February of 2025. That’s the bad news.
The good news is shoppers identify having meals at home with their families or friends as a way of combating food price concerns and a means of gaining more control. When asked about the benefits of family meals, half of our survey respondents pointed to the economic advantages of community meals, putting cost saving as the top motivator for eating together. For context, the other benefits such as improved family civility came in at 33%, increased fruit and vegetable consumption scored a 30% and more socially minded advantages such as improved school performance and lower likelihood of drug use were recognized by only 6%.
When you put all these benefit scores together, more than nine out of 10 shoppers recognize the amazing advantages to family meals and among these, two-thirds say the benefits outweigh the cost and effort necessary to pull them off. These recognized benefits contributed to the 44% who said they had family meals at home more often than they did in 2025 and a whopping 53% say they expect to have more in 2027. And this level of anticipated increased number of meals at home was comparably the same between households with children and households without children.
Overall, 40% of respondents said family meals are more balanced, 37% said they are fun to eat and 35% registered that they are healthier. These sentiments ran significantly stronger among households with children, with 48% of parents identifying family meals as more balanced, 47% seeing them as healthier and 44% recording them as more fun.
If your store serves distinct ethnic groups, research FMI collaborated on with Pogo reveals some interesting racial and cultural distinctions when examining barriers to family meals. We asked Asian, Black, Hispanic and white shoppers to rate the barriers to family meal preparation. Time and schedule was the top barrier for Asians, Blacks and whites. Cost was also a significant barrier for Black shoppers. For both Asians and Hispanics, planning and ingredient availability proved a bigger barrier than cost. As Hispanic Awareness Month overlaps with Family Meals Month, it is important to note that Hispanics, who tend to score high on recognizing the value of family meals, were relativity evenly split when it came to the barriers but registered planning and ingredient availability the biggest concern. Time and schedule came in second, followed closely by cost.
At a time when shoppers are seeking ways to gain control over their food spend and lower their anxiety about food prices, reminding them of and helping them take advantage of the economic and social advantages of meals together at home, while lowering the barriers they experience in executing them, is a wonderful win-win way of supporting your customers.
Learn more about FMI's family meals resources and activation ideas.
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