Where do people buy their baked goods and chocolate in 2022?

Physical stores aren’t the only place to shop for groceries anymore. While they’re still the primary source of bread, online vendors are snatching up more and more sales. Especially with new and convenient services such as Gorillas, Getir and Gopuff promising grocery deliveries by bike within ten minutes. 

Between 2018 and 2021, we’ve seen a growing interest in buying bakery products online. The proportion of consumers who have ever bought bread in this way has risen from 20 to 34 percent, and 40 percent have shopped online for patisserie. Consumers are most likely to turn to the internet for chocolate purchases: almost half have done so.

Most people still prefer to go to a bricks-and-mortar store for their groceries. The biggest barriers to buying online are concerns over quality and freshness, and the lack of personal contact and service from store employees. 

But prices and delivery times also keep consumers from shopping online for bread, pastries and chocolate. Forty-two percent say they have no interest in buying bread online, and 32 percent that they would not buy pastries, cakes, or fine patisserie in this way. But only 24% of consumers would not purchase a chocolate bar on the internet.

Around the world, we see that supermarkets are the most popular place to buy bread: 42 percent of consumers purchase a loaf of bread there at least once a week, compared to 33 percent for bakeries and 23 percent for convenience stores.

Consumers are slightly less likely to buy products like croissants and chocolate cake from supermarkets than they are to buy bread; supermarkets have a weekly penetration of 31 percent. This offers more possibilities for specialized bakery/patisserie shops (where the figure is 23 percent) and convenience stores (20 percent).

With chocolate-based treats, we see a similar distribution between sales outlets as for pastries, with a weekly penetration of 31 percent. Convenience stores, with their large variety of candy bars and to-go snacks, are frequented weekly by 23 percent of people, compared to 15 percent for bakery/patisserie shops and 12 percent for chocolate shops. 

So what drives consumers towards artisanal bakeries and patisserie shops on the one hand, and supermarkets on the other? Freshness and flavor are popular reasons to go the extra mile and visit a specialty shop. Supermarkets and convenience stores benefit from their convenient locations and competitive prices. However, unpackaged freshly baked supermarket buns and pastries pose a challenge to artisan bakers, being perceived both as fresh and attractively priced.

Consumers around the world make different choices in terms of where to shop. Check out where they go in your region below or get in touch with your local Puratos representative to get the data for your specific country or market.

In the Taste Tomorrow 2022 Trend Forecast for Bakery, Patisserie & Chocolate, we also explore the omnichannel ‘phygital’ retail approach, and the use of technology and automation in shops.