Beer isn’t the only summer staple that the French shy away from. According to the NielsenIQ institute, ice cream sales in supermarkets fell 3.7% in volume in a year between the beginning of June and the end of July, to 160 million units.
Ice cream purchases even plummeted 17.2% the week of June 18 and 15.6% during the week of July 16. It must be said that sales behaved especially well during these same weeks of 2022, which were marked by days of heat waves (June 18 and July 19 were the hottest days of 2022).
However, the trend continued during the last two weeks of July (sales fell 9.6% the week of the 23rd and 11.2% the week of the 30th), this time due to bad weather that affected part of France.
The largest drops in consumption were observed in the southern departments of France and more broadly in the coastal regions: -13.2% by volume in the “Pyrénées-Aquitaine” region, -9.7% in “Provence-Languedoc”, -7.9% in “Nord -Picardie”, -6.2% in “Touraine Charente”, -1.5% on the Brittany and Normandy coasts…
By contrast, sales held up in Ile-de-France (-0.4%) and Grand Est (+0.2%).
Fewer consumers, but sales increased almost 10%
Beyond the weather, inflation, which has not skimped on the ice cream parlor (+20.4% accumulated since January 2022), has also influenced the drop in sales in volume. Also according to Nielsen, the number of households consuming ice cream fell by 129,000 among those under 35 years of age, by 44,000 among those 35 to 49 years of age, and by 51,000 among those 50 to 64 years of age in the last quarter. Only households over 65 years of age were more numerous than a year ago to have bought (+95,000).
Regarding the standard of living, it was upper-middle-income households that rejected ice cream the most (-117,000 households) as well as the most modest (-40,000), while the number of consumers among the richest was almost -stable ( +3000 homes).
Those who have not given up ice cream despite the economic situation have restricted their consumption. The most modest households thus reduced their purchases of ice cream by 7.4% during the last quarter. The fall is even 8.2% among households with four people.
The truth is that inflation allowed the value of ice cream sales to increase by 9.9% in a year between the end of June and the beginning of July, up to 582 million euros (+52.3 million).
The French love Magnums
The drop in ice cream sales volume must be put into perspective given the exceptional performance of 2022. If we compare with the summer of 2021, we can see that ice cream purchases increased this year by 12.9%.
Like every year, Magnum continues to be a must for the French. The Uniliver-owned brand has no less than six references in the top 10 bestsellers between the end of early June and the end of July. The box of 8 Magnum Almond bars comes out on top (10.9 million euros), ahead of the same box in format of 4 bars (10.1 million) and the 6 Extreme Vanilla cones from Nestlé (6.4 million ).
They are followed by the box of 4 Magnum Double candy bars (5.8 million euros), the Snickers Chocolate candy (5.3 million), the 465ml jar of Ben&Jerry’s Cookie Dough (5.3 million), the 8 chocolate bars Magnum Classic (5 million), the Magnum Classic chocolate 4 bars (4.8 million), the Magnum mini Almonds 6 bars (4.6 million) and finally the Carte d’Or Vanilla Madagascar 900 ml box.
Source: BFM TV
