The United Kingdom has seen a strong fall in prawn (shrimp) sales across all of the market’s foodservice channels, with the exception of travel and leisure, which has been showing very good growth, according to a special report prepared on behalf of the U.K. Seafish Authority.
Total prawn servings in 2015 fell by 4.8 percent or 5 million to just over 93 million. While travel and leisure recorded servings of 19.3 million, up 3.4 million compared to the previous year, there were steep declines in the following sectors: workplace/college/university (down 134,000 to 5.4 million), full service restaurants (FSR) (down 2.4 million to 33.8 million), pubs (down 3.4 million to 19.4 million) and quick service restaurants (down 1.9 million to 15.2 million).
With 27.5 percent of the total prawn servings accounted for in the 35-49 age bracket, and a further 18.1 percent by those aged 50-64, the report’s authors confirmed that the product tends to appeal to older consumers and therefore needs to expand its reach to younger consumers.
It was also found that adults accounted for 70.5 percent of total prawn servings in foodservice and that they appeal most to the more affluent A, B, C1 consumers.
The majority of servings (34.1 percent) are at lunch, followed by dinner with 30.6 percent and snacks with 22.2 percent.
According to the report’s authors, “prawns need to be seen as a more convenient food type, which links to portability as required in the QSR channel.”
