Food To Go forecast: resilience of the market drives growth over the next five years

IGD’s Food To Go (FTG) market brings together the away from home and grocery retail markets to provide a total picture of food to go. Our latest five-year forecast provides insights into the outlook of the market across five sectors – three from away from home (AFH) and two from retail – to identify the areas of greatest opportunity for all stakeholders.

The Food To Go market in 2025

The FTG market is set to see real growth (year-on-year sales value increase excluding inflation) of +2.5% this year. This is a more positive outlook than both the total AFH market (real growth of -2.6%) and the total retail grocery market (real growth of +0.6%).

FTG is one of the most resilient parts of both markets. After Covid, we saw consumers were quick to return to the market, both out of necessity as part of routines and as an area where they wanted to spend their disposable income. Despite consumer finances remaining under pressure, the variety of operators, price points and deals allows food to go to remain affordable for most needs and budgets.

FTG from AFH set to be long-term winner

The five-year outlook for the market shows that food to go from the away from home sectors is set to grow its share of the market. While retail will lose 0.8% of its share over the next five years, this does not indicate poor performance in the retail sectors. There will still be positive growth for retail FTG both in nominal and real terms, but growth will just be stronger in the AFH sectors.

In part, this will be driven by higher inflation in the AFH sectors but also due to the success of the food to go specialists sector. FTG specialists are set to have the largest share of the market by the end of the forecast period, overtaking fast food specialists (who have historically always had the greatest share) in 2028.

The FTG specialists sector has a broad range of operators, ranging from value-focused operators like Greggs to more premium offerings like Pret. This means the sector is well-placed to meet all budgets. Operators in this sector have also been diversifying their location portfolios, with travel hubs being a key focus area as the travel sector continues to see growth in traveller numbers.

Opportunities in the market

Our full report details the opportunities for each of the five sectors of the market for both operators and suppliers. As an overview – the key opportunities in FTG in the AFH sectors lie in responding quickly to emerging flavour and marketing trends and expanding daypart focus while improving and maintaining efficiencies in front- and back-of-house processes. For retail FTG, optimising the range on quick commerce will help compete more directly with foodservice competition online, and in-store layouts designed for a food to go mission will ease and improve the consumer journey.

 

Download the full report

To learn more about our findings and the opportunities for growth our experts have identified, read the full Food To Go forecast 2025-2030 report (available to Retail Analysis and Away From Home subscribers).

Not subscribed? To find out more about our subscriptions and gain access to our experts’ insights, contact us: [email protected]