Forget chocolate and golden syrup, Central England Co-op shoppers prefer something a bit fruitier when it comes to their pancake toppings, new research reveals.
Ahead of this year’s Pancake Day on February 25, the retailer has revealed which toppings have been finding their way in to their shopper’s baskets in recent years.
Surprisingly, the most popular topping emerged as Strawberries, seeing a huge rise of 77% in sales from 2018 to 2019 according to the data for the week up to and including Pancake Day. This is followed by Blueberries, then Sugar, Raspberries, and Lemon Juice.
This suggests that people are looking for healthier options for their pancakes and an 8% rise in blueberry sales in Shrove Tuesday week last year adds to that theory, as well as suggesting more and more people are cooking up pancakes for their breakfast on pancake day, not just as an evening treat.
The research reveals the popularity of traditional favourites such as golden syrup and sugar may be on the wane, both dropping in sales over the last three years, while after seeing a large drop between 2017 and 2018, lemon juice saw a 4% rise in the figures for 2019.
For those health-conscious consumers, new for 2020 in selected Central England Co-op stores are a range of Skinny Food Co. syrups and sauces, with zero sugar, zero fat and zero calories.
What is clear from the data is that increasingly shoppers are looking for a quicker and easier solution to their Pancake Day needs with ready-made pancake mix seeing a 30% rise in sales from 2017 to 2019, while plain flour sales, a vital pancake ingredient, fell 20% in that period.
This Pancake Day Central England Co-op shoppers have all their needs covered with ready-made mixes, spreads, lemon juice, fruits and even frying pans and measuring jugs available in store.