Market Overview

The food delivery service market (total values for 8 major categories) in FY2022 rose to 102.3 percent of the previous fiscal year to 2,536.3 billion yen. While the entire domestic food related markets have been generally on the decline in an aging society with fewer children, the food delivery service market has remained stable. On the other hand, the growth rate after FY2020 has returned to pre-corona level.

Food delivery services have become more important year by year due to the social demand such as women’s empowerment and aging population together with falling birth rate. The upsurge in demand during the corona crisis in FY2020 caused a concern of a potential sudden downtrend, but many of the eight categories have remained strong. It can be said that the pandemic has triggered to establish these services in daily lives. Still, due to enhanced products and services, the competition not only among different industries but among business categories is intensifying.

Noteworthy Topics

The Meal Kit Market

Meal kits that are the set of pre-cooked ingredients for necessary numbers of people are showing favorable sales. Of those kits, the mainstream is a set of prepared meat and vegetables already cut and condiments, meeting the demands of people in the modern times, which are not to spend the time for considering the menus to make, for shopping nor cooking, but want a sense of home-made.

Conventionally, meal kits have been categorized as one of foodstuff (ready-to-eat food) delivery services, but they have entered those channels such as co-ops and online supermarkets in recent years, with wider variations and improved quality. While the main users are double-income households or households with children, as they need time saving when cooking, meal kits are popular also among aged households with their weakened physical strength to shop or cook, or among those single households not used to cooking and prefer shorter cooking hours. Therefore, the vendors are making efforts to enhance products to meet the diversifying user needs.

Enormous increase in demand for meal kits stems not only from the demand for saving time and labor for cooking, but also from the COVID-19 pandemic when people had more opportunities to have meals at home including lunches as they had to stay home as much as possible. Now that the behavior restrictions during the corona crisis have been lifted and the opportunities to dine outside have gradually increased, the growth rate of meal kits has quietened down. Still, the meal kit (for delivery) market for FY2022 is expected to exceed 180,000 million yen.

Future Outlook

CAGR for the food delivery market from FY2022 to FY2027 is projected to be 2.8%, keeping the stable growth, with the market size for FY2027 expected to reach 2,907,400 million yen.

The market that surged in the corona crisis maintains the growth trends, though the behavior restrictions are lifted as the legal status of COVID-19 has been downgraded to “class 5“, a common infectious disease. Increased daily use of food delivery services has made the services as indispensable for consumers.

Research Outline