There’s no shortage of market research to infer that certain populations, particularly baby boomers and Hispanics, are fueling America’s growing appetite for seafood. But one demographic that’s often overlooked are college students — those wide-eyed 18- to 22-year-olds eager to embrace the world, learn and, well, party a bit along the way.
The dining experience at colleges and universities across the United States has come a long, long way. Years ago, “dorm food” wasn’t exactly worth writing home about, offering little in the way of taste and variety, especially when it came to seafood. The only seafood meal I distinctly recall consuming in my four years at the University of Maine, excluding the ubiquitous tuna-salad sandwich, was a twin lobster dinner. And that, naturally, came on parents’ weekend.
Though available of seafood on campuses nationwide is much greater than in years past, college students remain an underserved demographic, according to a recent Techonmic report that found only about one-third of students are satisfied overall with campus dining facilities.
This demographic is particularly appealing to seafood marketers because young adults are generally willing to try new foods and cuisines. And, when they enter the workforce and gain additional spending power, they take their new eating habits — and, ideally, new appreciation for seafood — with them.
“I do believe that the college years are formative for future taste preferences with respect to menu items and restaurants, because this is when many consumers are on their own for the first time and truly making their own choices. They tend to be more experimental and try foods and beverages they have never had before,” said Sara Monnette, director of consumer research at Chicago-based Technomic. “Some of the things they find they like, [and] they will continue to consume well beyond the college years.”
But getting students to try new seafood items requires a nudge, and a little creativity.
“I don’t know if students are making a conscious effort to eat more seafood, but I think that we’re getting them more excited about the items we prepare using seafood,” said Glenn Graziano, general manager of dining services at Pomona College in Southern California, which serves about 3,000 meals to 1,500 students daily. “We’re trying to find creative ways to serve [seafood], where it’s an ingredient in tacos or paella or jumbalaya, or our blackened mahimahi salad. There are creative ways of presenting it as an ingredient of an entrée, as opposed to putting out a fillet that’s barely seasoned. We try to make it creative and exciting, and that’s how we’re getting more interest” in seafood.
And it’s working. “Actually, over the last semester, we got a fair amount of comments asking for more seafood, and that people really like having fish on the menu at least once a day,” said Samantha Meyer, the school’s sustainability and purchasing coordinator. “From our perspective, it seems that there’s a fair amount of interest in seafood.”
Pomona is working to extend that interest in seafood to sustainability. In June, Pomona became the first U.S. liberal arts college to earn the Marine Stewardship Council chain-of-custody certification, part of a school-wide commitment to sustainability.
As the 2011-12 school year fast approaches, seafood marketers should be thinking about tapping into this underserved demographic, if they already haven’t. There’s still a lot of opportunity to grow seafood consumption at academic institutions. And, if Pomona’s dining-services program is any indication, a lot of creativity will go a long way.
