Deidra Speight, 32, is a former teacher, now a stay-at-home mom with four children, ages 9 to 4 months. She usually shops once or twice a week for groceries at a chain supermarket near her Laurel home.
What does she look for when shopping? Price is important, she says, but more important is high-quality, healthy food for her kids. Although she cooks most of the family's meals -- including a hot breakfast every morning -- she wants to be able to buy prepared food a couple of times a week when the kids' activities leave little time to prepare dinner.
Here's what she and others shopping for a family can expect to see at the supermarket in the coming year:
More organics. Ragu, Orville Redenbacher and Ocean Spray added organic items in 2005; expect to see more mainstream brands follow their lead in 2006. Supermarkets are developing their own organic house brands, such as Giant's Nature's Promise and Safeway's "O" (introduced in California, soon to expand). Organic sales growth is huge, says Perry Abbenante, the national grocery buyer for the Whole Foods chain. Expect to see more organic chocolate (important because the cocoa plant is one of the most heavily sprayed with pesticides, he says), organic cotton in paper products (such as swabs, cotton balls and tampons) -- there's even been talk of organic water.Acai is the new pomegranate. First it was blueberries that were full of anti-aging antioxidants, then pomegranate juice became the health drink sensation of 2005 (introduced in 2003, sales hit $50 million last year). It appears the next super-good-for-you fruit will be the Brazilian acai (ah-SIGH-ee). It's already showing up in Bossa Nova Acai Juice and in smoothies.Dinner already prepared. The Grocery Manufacturing Association says more than 50 percent of all Americans consider a "homemade" dinner one that combines fresh and convenience foods, so expect to see more dinner-ready items at your supermarket (add a salad and you've "made" dinner). What kind of prepared food do we like? Three out of four Americans eat Chinese, Italian and Mexican food both at restaurants and at home, according to a 2005 survey by Parade magazine.Chocolate is hot. Dark chocolate, boutique-brand chocolate, gourmet chocolate -- it's going to be a sweet year for chocoholics. Why else would behemoth Hershey buy the tiny Berkeley, Calif., chocolatier Scharffen Berger? Expect to see even more traditional milk chocolate products going "dark," with labels that list the percentage of cocoa (semisweet is about 40 percent, bittersweet is 60 percent or above). Also, more "drinking chocolate" products are made with gourmet chocolate.Building on the boomers. Americans ages 41 to 59 represent more than $2 trillion in spending power. In the supermarket, that will translate to bigger print on labels, more sit-down areas, smaller packages for empty nesters, more nutritional information and lower shelves, says David Orgel, editor in chief of Supermarket News.-- Candy Sagon
