Delivery Diaries: A breakdown of what India eats and how it's changing

The food delivery services have in their own way changed the contours of how we consume our daily meals. (Representative image)

Food consumption decision making is a nightmare for neoclassical economics. How do you explain a consumer picking a pizza for dinner, over tofu broccoli soup through the rational choice theory? Similarly, the urge to have one more gulab jamun, after having gobbled two, doesn’t always meet the rationales of diminishing returns, or marginalism.

Some years ago, a compelling research study by two Cornell academicians, found that an average consumer could be making as many as 200 decisions daily (most of these subconsciously) pertaining to food consumption - ranging from portions, plate size, cutlery, when to start, when to stop, refill, environment cues, ingredients, pricing etc. (Mindless Eating: The 200 Daily Food Decisions We Overlook- Brian Wansink and Jeffrey Sobal).

This complex cognition ensures that food consumption decisions are largely governed by heuristics, making it a gold mine for behavioural economics. But here too, any meaningful insights would take more than mere establishing a correlation between two or more factors. For instance, how do you reconcile the seemingly conflicting realities of food consumption becoming a secondary activity i.e. time spent on eating as primary activity has decreased, and an overall increase in consumption quantity?

Eating Is Now a Secondary Activity

This is true for most societies - how often do we sit together at our dining tables for all the three meals the way we would do a decade ago? While eating you are watching TV, attending your office call, or possibly playing a game of scrabble with your child - making eating the secondary activity.

But a closer look reveals that while food consumption may have become secondary, the meal occasions have grown. The idea of three distinct meals has given way to multiple mid-meal occasions.

Three Square Meals to Six Moments of Craving

A recent research report suitably titled How India Eats (a collaborative outcome between Swiggy and Bain & Co) points to a trend of anytime eating where mid meal events are punctuating the traditional sequence of breakfast, lunch and dinner. This reflects in the order frequency at Swiggy- where we witness six key business moments during a day i.e. breakfast, brunch, lunch, evening snack, dinner and late-night meals.

Each of these occasions have their salience with a distinct assortment of what is ordered. If Dosa and Idli are the preferred orders in breakfast, the brunch time orders are myriad varieties of biryani and rice.

Similarly, the proclivity to order chicken fried rice isn’t restricted to dinner time but also exhibits in late/midnight ordering. Margherita pizza, which is very popular during evening snacks, and wanes during the dinner peak, makes a resurgence in late night orders.

Biryani’s popularity (by far the most-ordered dish across food platforms) has been well documented. Its delightful savoury appeal is undisputed, but can we say, that its ubiquity as one of the top dishes in five of the six meal ordering occasions as shown in the report (breakfast being the only exception) is perhaps also attributable to convenience of eating for a busy executive. Just put in a plate, with your favourite condiments and it won’t come in the way of typing on a laptop, the way dunking a naan/roti in a dal would!

There are of course moments when we are more relaxed - the evening snack, when the mood is more convivial, and one has taken a reprieve from work desk for a brief interlude of chai laden mirth with colleagues or family. So, popularity of samosas and pav bhaji- meals we usually enjoy in company of others, the accompaniments to your cuppa-reinforces what may be anecdotally observed.

Delivery Influences

Needless to say, that this expansion has also been catalysed by the food delivery services. The alteration affected by the online channel doesn’t merely reflect in new eating events during the day, but also in commemorative occasions.

Valentine’s and other such anniversaries are some of the highest order days in the year. The card which you have earlier given to your loved one, is now accompanied by a cake you ordered from her preferred cakery. You make mother feel special by giving her a break from the kitchen by ordering from her favourite restaurant, and so on.

The effortless discovery, the convenience of delivery, the abundance of choices and ease of comparison, provided by delivery services continues to change consumer behaviour and favourably impacts the overall F&B sector.

A cursory look at the numbers in the report indicates a massive headroom to grow. The food delivery penetration in the Indian market stands at 12 percent, almost half of what it is in China, the United States and South Korea. This imminent food delivery growth, in turn will propel the growth of the overall food services market, which the report estimates to grow at 10-12 per cent year on year over the next seven years i.e. from the existing Rs 5 lakh crore, India’s food services markets will be worth Rs 9-10 lakh crore by 2030.

“Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking, if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity,” remarked Voltaire, the famous French philosopher of the Enlightenment era. The food delivery services have in their own way changed the contours of how we consume our daily meals. From the necessity of the two square meal, it has become a delightful all-day occasion.