Grocers ramp up ready-made meals as Canadians balance convenience and costs

A costumer shops at Vince’s Market, a grocery store in Sharon, Ontario, on Thursday November 21, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Grocers are investing more in the ready-made meal category as consumers balance their desire for convenience with a pullback in discretionary spending.

They’re going beyond rotisserie chicken, pasta salad and turkey wraps to diversify the dishes on offer as they try to capture budget-conscious Canadians.

“It is a good way to drive traffic and also increase the overall basket size,” said Carman Allison, vice-president of business development at NielsenIQ Canada.

“Retailers are realizing they can be a destination for a lot of consumers,” he said, and that they’re competing with restaurants and fast food joints for shoppers' dollars.

Ninety-two per cent of Canadians have purchased a meal at the grocery store in the past year, said Allison.

“I think a lot of consumers now are realizing that you can go to a grocery store and get something that’s prepared, and typically it is cheaper” than restaurant food, he said, adding that you also don’t need to worry about tipping at the grocery store.

The ready-made meal section of a grocery store these days could include sushi, jerk chicken, chicken korma or breakfast sandwiches. Some are hot and ready to eat, while others are made to be heated or cooked at home.

Coming out of the pandemic, as inflation began taking a bite out of consumers’ budgets, many shoppers turned to ready-made meals at the grocer as an alternative to dining out, said Jana Sobey, senior vice-president of fresh merchandising at Empire-owned Sobeys, and a member of the family that founded the grocery chain.

The meals served as a midway point between the convenience of eating out and the savings of cooking at home, said Sobey.

The grocer saw sales of its ready-made options grow amid inflation, she said, but even as inflation subsided, the growth continued.

She believes it’s a longer-term shift.

Inflation may have stabilized around two per cent, but that doesn’t mean prices are dropping — they’re still up significantly from just a few years ago, and consumers are still looking for deals and being cautious with their spending. The trade war with the U.S. also poses an upside risk to prices, depending on how long it lasts.

Consumers see ready-made meals as being of better value compared with restaurant meals or ordering delivery, said Joel Gregoire, associate director for food and drink at market research company Mintel.

Mintel research from 2022 and 2024 shows an uptick in consumers saying they are buying ready-made meals at the grocery store on a regular basis, Gregoire said.

“It went up from 62 per cent in 2022 to 66 per cent in 2024,” he said.

Canadians spent $3.6 billion last year on meals from grocery stores, said Allison, translating into 420 million meals. They spend on average just $8.55 per meal, he said.

“With consumers, they are trying to cut back, but at the same time, we still value convenience, so we’re willing to pay a little bit more, potentially, to have someone prepare that meal for us,” he said.

“It’s still a very economical meal option when you think about it.”

Grocer-made dishes can fill the gaps in a home-cooked meal, Gregoire said. For example, a shopper might buy a cooked rotisserie chicken, but then buy the ingredients to make their own salad or buy a bagged salad at the store.

“It’s done some of the work for you,” he said.

A rotisserie chicken is a staple of grocery-store meals, said Allison, and drives a lot of traffic to stores. But there is also growth in different types of cuisine, he said.

Sobeys has responded to the increased interest by offering a more diverse selection of meals in its stores, said Sobey, adding the grocer has had a lot of success in particular in expanding its multicultural food options.

The grocer also recently began opening centralized kitchens to take on some of the more complicated preparation and cooking in order to support the grocery stores, she said. One of the products being moved to central production is soup being prepared for Alberta stores, she said.

The soup previously came from a supplier, but is now being “elevated” as it’s moved in-house, she said.

“Now it has no preservatives, no additives. It’s got a much shorter shelf life. It’s done in sort of small craft batches, all while basically helping to decrease cost and up the quality,” she said.

“I think just all of the opportunity that we see has helped us to really double down on that strategy.”

Ready-made meals are also a way that full-service grocery stores differentiate themselves from discount stores, said Allison. Consumers have been flocking to discount stores in recent years as a way of saving money, but there are far fewer ready-made options in those stores, he said.

“I think we’re starting to see this polarization, the fact that if you want staples, and you want some of the standard grocery shopping, you go to discount. That’s the way Canadians have been shopping,” he said.

“And then the conventional side of things still has a huge, huge opportunity to look for those unique products.”

At Loblaw-owned grocer Fortinos, ready-made meals are a big part of the business, said Guido Alfonsi, vice-president of merchandising and marketing for the banner.

Fortinos has been expanding its offerings since its Pane Fresco program launched in 2011, he said.

“It’s definitely a point of differentiation, and it’s a key component of our business that we’re heavily focused on.”

However, Loblaw has also more recently been investing in ready-made meals in its discount stores.

At Maxi — Loblaw’s discount banner in Quebec — the grocer partnered with local celebrity chef Jonathan Garnier to build a new suite of ready-made meals that launched in October. The items, all coming in at $20 or less, include frozen and fresh dishes, side dishes and appetizers, such as butter chicken, cabbage rolls, beef bourguignon and mashed potatoes.

Before the pandemic, the category was already growing, said Sylvain Lemieux, senior director of banner merchandising for No Frills and Maxi.

After some volatility during the pandemic, it’s back on track in terms of growth, he said.

The idea behind the launch was to offer shoppers versatile items that could be used in different ways to put together a meal, said Garnier: like the meatballs, which can be easily added to a pasta.

Dinner has long been the biggest focus for grocers’ ready-made meals, Allison said, but there are more opportunities in lunch and even breakfast as Canadians increasingly go back to the office post-pandemic.

“I think grocers could definitely capitalize on that,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2025.

Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:EMP.A)

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press