Teen Eating & Drinking Occasions Landscape: Feeding the Next Generation of Opportunity
Teens’ eating and drinking behaviors are distinct from adults—shaped by lifestage and cohort-defining traits and values. With more social and away-from-home occasions, teens already wield significant influence over household food and beverage choices. Understanding their habits today is essential for brands looking to build trust and loyalty with the shoppers, diners, and spenders of tomorrow.
Eating & Drinking Occasions Landscape 2024 provides an in-depth look into how teens ate and drank in 2024, compared to U.S. adults, while also looking back at the past 6 years to identify key shifts —to help food and beverage companies build and optimize their strategy for the consumers of the future.
Available for purchase now | Published August 2025 | U.S. Market coverage
67-page report (PowerPoint and PDF)
- Hartman's Compass Eating & Drinking Occasions Database is a comprehensive database on American eating patterns, grounded in a complete enumeration of past-24-hour eating occasions
- Fielded as 3 annual waves (April-May 2024; July-August 2024; September-October 2024) among U.S. teens (aged 13-17) and adults (aged 18-78), national sample (balanced by age, gender, region, education, income, number of children, and race/ethnicity)
- Including 6 years of trended data (2019-2024)
- Methodology and introduction
- Occasion context: understanding the when, where and with whom of teen eating & drinking occasions
- Sourcing and preparation: understanding where food and beverages are sourced and how they are prepared
- Consumer needs: understanding the why behind teen eating & drinking occasions
- 7 daypart occasion dashboards
- Top 10 takeaways & recommendations
- Comprehensive insights on 2024 eating and drinking occasions for teens, including key differences between adults and dayparts
- Dashboards (2 slides each) for each of the 7 eating dayparts for teen occasions: early-morning snack, breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, after-dinner/late-night snack
- Key takeaways and recommendations
