As I start each year’s predictions, I like to look back at the year prior to analyze what came to fruition and what didn’t.

Firstly, I incorrectly guessed that grocery spend would outpace that of restaurants. When comparing US Census MARTS data of bars and restaurants (food-away-from-home) against grocery and liquor stores (food-at-home), consumers spent ~11% more on the former. Of course, this data doesn’t examine the role of inflation, which was much higher in foodservice. Another miss was my prediction around the growth of frozen food. While the category’s sales did grow thanks to inflation, unit sales declined.

But a number of predictions I made at the start of 2023 seemed to pan out: