Who Knew? Millennials Are Foodies

"I am a Millennial, born between 1980 and 1994, and therefore, according to a conspiracy of journalists, sociologists and assorted pundits, a spoiled, overachieving, techno-centric brat. So to fly in the face of all that, I'm enrolling in culinary school." - Sophie Brickman, August 2008

Sophie is not as much of an outlier as she thinks she is. In fact, 2 out of 3 Millennials are what Mintel classifies as 'Casual Cooking Enthusiasts'.

Casual Cooking Enthusiasts are 53% of the total population but 65% of those 18-24 years old. They find cooking a 'pleasurable hobby' and cook an average of 4.4 'elaborate' or 'gourmet' meals every six months, more than 4 times as many as those who 'Avoid cooking' or are 'Non-enthusiastic cooks'. As they grow older and start families, the Mintel data suggests many Millennials will become 'Serious Cooking Enthusiasts'. Serious cooking enthusiasts are 16% of the overall population, but 18% of those 25-34 years old.

Casual Cooking Enthusiasts not only cook more gourmet meals, they also have different attitudes toward food. This means that instead of relying on a diet of Ramen and Easy Mac, Millennial casual cooking enthusiasts are a target for locally grown organic and fresh ingredients. They are more likely to agree with these statements:

You enjoy experimenting with new recipes (86%)

You buy ingredients that are from different countries for specific recipes (61%)

You buy utensils, cookware and other kitchen items if you need them for a new recipe or cooking technique (58%)

You always try to cook with seasonal or local foods (57%)

You are willing to spend more money for the highest quality ingredients (55%)

Millenials have shown a preference for luxury tastes in everything from technology to beer. So it should come as no surprise to see that they are over-represented among foodies. As for Sophie Brickman, she appears to have no regrets about her decision to enroll in culinary school. In February, she posted to her blog that she is enjoying serving gourmet meals to her friends. Here's her description of a bacon-themed moveable feast.

"Enrolling in culinary school turned out to be a prescient kind of life-style insurance. When the economy tanked, my friends and I started cooking. We found that, for a fraction of the price and with a little creativity, we could cook a three-course meal that would cost $45 per person at any reasonable establishment. While the setting is never luxurious (screws routinely fall out of my table, which causes all guests to crowd on one side, for stability,) the food is. It began a few months ago, when I offered to cook a bacon-themed dinner for my boyfriend on his birthday. I had decided to make a salad (boring, save the goat cheese croutons), Beef Bourguignon (which calls for braising cheap cuts of meat until they become "fork tender," a term of expertise I picked up at school and enjoy using almost as much as "mouthfeel") and caramelized-bacon-and-chocolate-chip-cookies (Oh. My. God).

The boys politely slogged through the arugula salad, keeping abbreviations to a minimum, but when I brought out the beef bourguignon, the table became silent. The pasta had clumped together, but they didn't care. One bit into a chunk of braised beef and moaned, quietly. Another crunched on a thick-cut bacon lardon. (We'd been trained to cut our lardons big in school, at the request of our 250-pound instructor: "I didn't get this way by eating lettuce," he said, disparaging the "puny French chefs" who prefer their bacon cut into "teeny crumblings.") They asked for seconds. Then thirds. One excused himself to the kitchen to "tidy up" and licked the pot. By the time I brought out the chocolate-chip cookies, each topped with a thick piece of caramelized bacon, all three were lying on the rug, moaning with gastro-erotic contentment."

Millennials: The Education Divide

As a college professor, it's easy for me to forget that not all Millennials are college students or graduates. In December, I called attention to a recent Mintel Market Research report (Oct 2008) that notes college students are just 15% of the 71 million young adults 18-34 in the U.S. The report says 'Affluent Young Adults' make up another 19%. The remaining two thirds are what Mintel calls 'Minimalists' or 'Unpowered Young Adults'. These groups are quite different in their demographics, buying habits and general outlook on life. The large number of 'Minimalists', and their aggregate buying power, make them critically important for marketers to understand.

A new report from Tufts University ("Youth Demographics - Youth with No College Experience") provides an even more detailed picture of the education divide among Millennials. The report focuses on young adults 18-29 years old. Like Mintel, the report reminds us that non-college educated young adults represent a sizeable opportunity for marketers. The rate of college education among 18-29 year olds has increased steadily since the 1960's, yet today only 52% of all young adults have at least some post-high school education.

The Tufts report rebuts one of the the most widely shared views of this generation, it's civic-mindedness. According to the report, this trait is a function of education. Those who have no college experience are significantly less engaged on 10 different dimensions, from voting, to volunteering to membership in clubs or unions than their college educated counterparts.

In the Presidential primaries and caucuses, young people who had college experience were 18 percentage points more likely to vote than their counterparts with no college experience (25% and 7%, respectively). In the general election 70% of young people who voted had at least some college experience. Comparing non-college youth to full-time college students and people with bachelor’s degrees would produce substantially bigger gaps.

The education divide is apparent in other ways as well. Non-college young adults are more likely to be unemployed. Census data through March 2008 shows the unemployment rate for 18-29s with no college experience was 13.6%, while only 4.5% for those with some college. Interestingly, they are equally likely to be married.

What makes all this especially interesting is that another Tufts report (“Civic Engagement and the Changing Transition to Adulthood”) says it wasn't always this way. In fact, they believe that there is a generational shift that is increasing the divide between those with and without college educations. This report argues that "life has changed dramatically for people in their 20s. Marriage, childbearing, financial independence, and other aspects of the “transition to adulthood” have been transformed since the 1970s, and are now very different for people with and without college educations."

Most disturbingly, they conclude that young adults without college experience are permanently missing some aspects of civic engagement–such as group membership–that were common thirty years ago. While this has obvious implications for society and policy, it also is important context for marketers. We must keep in mind that there is great diversity among 71 million people, and generational shifts we see among the college educated, like civic-mindedness, may not hold for everyone.