Brits favour French pastries to start their day
According to analysts at Mintel, sales of brioche – a rich, buttery French bread – rose 25 per cent in 2011 to £38 million (RM181.25 million) from 2010, while pain au chocolat – that flaky croissant-like pastry filled with a wedge of chocolate – also spiked 14 per cent to £25 million in 2011 over the previous year.
“French baked goods such as brioche have recorded impressive value growth, suggesting Brits are developing a stronger taste for sweet bakery goods,” said senior analyst Alex Beckett in a release. “The fact that these goods can be eaten at breakfast could suggest that this growth is to the detriment of sliced bread.”
Overall, the report, released January 24, found that almost a quarter of all Brits start their day by tucking into a sweet French pastry.
Meanwhile, it seems that sales of more traditional British baked goods and pastries like hot cross buns and English muffins are losing steam against their French counterparts: between 2010 and 2011, the Easter bun saw modest growth of 7 per cent, while sales of the English muffin declined by 3 per cent during the same period.
The two major exceptions to the Francophile trend in baked goods were toast – which emerged as the nation’s favourite breakfast for 81 per cent of Brits – and scones (or tea biscuits) which rose 19 per cent from £28 million in 2010 to £33 million in 2011.
Earlier this year, a survey of British chefs and food experts commissioned by cereal maker Kellogg’s predicted that the traditional full English fry-up could become gastronomically extinct, with multicultural influences replacing sausage, eggs and black pudding with warm crab porridge, hot chilies, seaweed flakes, and sardines or potted herring.
Multicultural influences already seem at play, as the Mintel report also pointed out that another international import in baked goods that proved popular among Brits last year was the all-American bagel, which grew 48 per cent in sales between 2010 to 2011, a value of £49 million. – AFP
