Why go out to eat? What happened to advertising that makes people want to eat at home?
Posted by Dave Mace at 10:31 pm
One of my favorite things is cooking. But like many of us, I eat on the go and don’t take enough time to eat at home as often as I would like. That’s why I wonder why I don’t turn in the tv in Wichita and see more advertisements for food products and grocery stores that encourage consumers to cook at home.
When I was a kid about 30 cents of every food dollar was spent in restaurants. Today, it’s more like 50 cents of each food dollar.
I have to think that the absence of commercials extolling the virtues of home cooking is a contributing factor. Remember the Crisco, Wesson and Shake and Bake ads? Then it became mac and cheese. Before long, the tv portrayal of home-cooked food was frozen, microwaveable pizza rolls.
So it’s no surprise that grocery stores have lost ground to restaurants in the food marketing war. The food arena is probably the most dynamic advertising spectacle in the world. But supermarkets, fresh food makers and food preparation folks seem to have abdicated.
It would not seem to take a lot to create a lust among consumers to make cooking at home a regular pleasure again. Especially when so much foodservice advertising is so mundane and predictable. The cost of eating in restaurants relative to our current economic situation opens the door even wider for at-home food products and grocery stores to regain prominence.
In the meantime, I thought I would share a photo of my guilty pleasure: homemade fish and chips. Cheers!
p.s. Here is my five-minute black bean soup recipe. Enjoy the instructional video.
