What are Australians eating and drinking? What are they cleaning their homes with? Or brushing their teeth with? What is going on in Australia's FMCG market?
What's Going On In The Australian Biscuits Market? Part Eight: "Flavoured Snacks" Back In Good Shape!
“Flavoured
Snacks.” Probably not the illuminative
category description in the world – I mean, aren’t all snacks flavoured? – but
it’s what Retail World have decided to call those cracker-like biscuits with
“flavour you can see.” Flavours like
BBQ, Chicken, Pizza, the generic Savoury.
And increasingly flavours like Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream, Honey BBQ
Chicken, BBQ Ribs Blast, Hot Dog, Peri Peri Chicken Slam and Caramelised Onion
& Cheddar (which just goes to show that there may be no category on the
supermarket shelves that has not become foodie-fied).
Other people just call
them “Savoury Crackers.”
Probably the easiest
way to describe the category to an Australian would just be to say, “like
Arnott’s Shapes.”
No surprise then what
the dominant brand is.
“Flavoured snacks”
aren’t only Arnott’s Shapes however. There
are challengers of sorts, or at least wannabe challenges. They are just far, far behind. According to Retail World Annual Report,
Arnott’s were on 84.9% value market share in 2015. No other brand even came close to breaking
double figures.
Fantastic Delite is even heading backwards, hence their pinkish hue in our graph, where green means making market share gains and red means market share losses.
There is Fantastic
Delites for the more sophisticated snacker.
And Ritz Snackz for the only slightly more sophisticated snacker. There used to be Ritz In A Biskit, but they
were discontinued in 2014 (unfairly I believe, for whilst In A Biskit’s market
share was certainly trending downward, it was quite a gradual trend and they
were still holding a quite respectable 7% value market share in 2013, which
means that their absence left a significant number of fans feeling distraught)
What's Going On In The Australian Biscuits Market? Part Six: Sweet Biscuits Growth Prospects Not So Sweet
“Sweet biscuits”- and
in this case we are using the Retail World definition of “sweet biscuits” which
includes plain biscuits, cream biscuits, and cookies, but not chocolate coated biscuits which are a whole other thing - make up just over a third of the total biscuit
market in Australia. Sweet biscuits are
also by some distance the largest biscuit category in Australia, big enough
that their performance is critical to the performance of the biscuit aisle
overall.
And the performance of
the “sweet biscuits” category in recent years has largely been lacklustre. Even if we assume that the sudden dip in 2013
was an aberration at least partially due to the Zumbo-led Tim Tam revival being experienced over in the chocolate coated biscuit category, the one-and-a-bit percent value growth over the last two
years is hardly something to get excited about.
This lacklustre
performance of “sweet biscuits” is even more concerning when you consider that
since 2013 it has included a new brand; a brand so different from what you
usually think of when you say “sweet biscuits” that some might argue it should
not be included at all. Some might argue
that it shouldn’t even be stocked in the biscuit aisle, but the breakfast
aisle. I myself am rather sympathetic to these arguments.
I am of course
referring to Belvita, the “sweet biscuit” so big that it is marketed as a
breakfast replacement. Launched into the
Australian “sweet biscuit” market with quite a bit of hype, it grabbed 3.2%
value market share that year, and has gradually expanded its popularity from
there. Very gradually. In 2015 Belvita’s market share reached
4%. Belvita’s momentum might be slow,
but it’s still one of the more dynamic performers of the “sweet biscuits”
category.
The only brand more dynamic is Oreo. Although Oreo's performance over the last five years has been inconsistent; sometimes up, sometimes down, but always hovering somewhere between 5-8% market share, which actually makes them the most popular sweet biscuit brand in Australia. But 2015 was one of the good years. And that's before the launch of Oreo Thins, which didn't happen until early 2016. A good time then for Mondelez - who own Oreo - to launch an Oreo Cadbury Dairy Milk!
Yes, 2015 was certainly a good year for Oreo.
A bad year however for Arnott's Tiny Teddy, a brand that only until last year was the largest brand in sweet biscuits; it's now No.2. Are the parents of Australia looking for a healthier snack for their children?
What's particularly impressive about Oreo's success - although looking at the longer term of five years their market share has barely budged - is that they have achieved this despite having the highest unit price on the market.
Therefore, much of the
already slow growth being experienced by the “sweet biscuits” category is
coming from outside of the category’s traditional market. A look at which demographics particularlyenjoy a “sweet biscuit” – as we did a few blog posts ago - goes a long way in
revealing why; “sweet biscuits” are particularly favoured by elderly
Australians (and particularly elderly ladies) who like to partake of an
Arnott’s Kingston (my personal favourite “sweet biscuit”) whilst having a cupof tea or coffee.
And this is the
problem that “sweet biscuits” face. As
we mentioned in a previous post, the Australian tea market is in a seemingly
irreversible decline, largely due to the fact that the consumption of tea is
particularly skewed towards those over the age of 70, an age group that is - to
put it in as sensitive a manner as possible - coming to the end of their
lifecycle.
The prospects for
“sweet biscuits” are not quite as dire.
Whilst consumption of tea is very generation-specific, the consumption
of coffee is not; and coffee consumers still need something to dunk in their
coffee. Still the idea of a relaxing
coffee/biscuit combination is increasingly seeming quaint, particularly if you
could have something a bit fancier instead: a brownie perhaps, or a
friand. Or a chocolate coated biscuit.
The result is that
“sweet biscuits” consumption is increasingly skewed towards the sweet old lady
demographic.
Little surprise
therefore that by far the largest player in the “sweet biscuits” category is a
company whose brands – for the most part – go back even further than their key
demographic.
I am referring of
course to Arnott’s; a company with 58.5% value market share of the “sweet
biscuits” market in 2015. A company whose Facebook page currently features a cover photo of an old fashioned biscuit tin. Their nostalgia-hungry fans – no doubt – would approve.
Nostalgic photos of
biscuit tins are fine for reinforcing Arnott’s brand image as the great Australian
biscuit company, but it’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to category
growth. Particularly in the face of the
rather more dynamic chocolate coated biscuit category which appears to be
stealing consumers from the neighbouring “sweet biscuits” portion of the
biscuits aisle.
Chocolate coatedbiscuits have grown because of the innovative flavours launched by Tim Tam, who
are of course also owned by Arnott’s. Arnott’s have paid a lot of attention to
their chocolate coated biscuits brands, and relatively little attention to
their “sweet biscuits” brands, which have remained virtually unchanged for
decades.
Little surprise then
that Coles has gone off searching around the world for a brand to bring a little
pizzazz to the biscuit aisle. Although,
as with most things Coles does, that simply means importing a popular British
brand: Maryland, otherwise known as “Britain’s Favourite Cookie,” - who appear
to have taken a kind of Cadbury’s Marvellous Creations take on the cookie:
“Mix’ems with Fruit Jellies and Candy Shells”! – and Fox’s.
Woolworths’ preferred pizzazzing
strategy is to launch a range of cookies under their gourmet Woolworths’ Gold private
label brand.
Private labels have a
relatively strong presence in “sweet biscuits”, hovering just over 10%. Whilst not particularly high in the grand
scheme of things, that’s twice as high as is the case in chocolate coated
biscuits, where Tim Tam’s range of fancy biscuits has kept them a step or two
ahead of competition.
There is more to the “sweet
biscuits” market than just the continued dominance of Arnott’s and the rise of
Belvita however. Mondelez’ other brand –
Oreo – appears to have found a stable following in Australia, hovering just
over 5%, but the final relatively major player – Green’s, the owner of Paradise
and Greens cookies since 2014, before which Paradise was owned by Goodman
Fielder – appears to have lost its way, losing 4.4% market share over the last four years.
Specializing in
cookies, Greens appears to have lost the cookie consumer to the moister offerings
of store baked cookies, their market share almost halving from 11.3% in 2011
down to 6.9% in 2015. It is rather difficult to compete with freshly baked
cookies after all.
Which is yet another
threat that Arnott’s needs to deal with.
It’s not just the demographic difficulties, it’s the temptation of
freshly baked cookies outside of the biscuit aisle. They’ve already succeeded in revitalizing the
chocolate coated biscuit category; what can they do with “sweet biscuits”?
Following the success
of Tim Tam’s efforts, Arnott’s have finally come up with a two-pronged strategy
to revitalise the “sweet biscuits” category.
The first, and less exciting of the two, is to reinvent the packaging
from white to a more majestic looking metallic red. The second is their Twisted Faves range, another
example of what I like to call the Marvellous Creationism of snack foods. There is a Salted Caramel Monte Carlo. A Jaffa Choc Orange Delta Cream. A Strawberries & Cream Shortbread
Cream. A Choc Chip Scotch Finger.
It’s not quite Espresso Martini flavour, but
it’s something.
Arnott’s claimed that
all of this was just to celebrate their 150th Anniversary. But it’s
probably also to inject some excitement into a quite frankly stale category. It certainly needs it.
The Australian chocolate coated biscuit market is BACK! More or less.
Things had been
looking shaking there for a couple of years, dipping into quite worrying levels
of negative value growth in 2012, at which time the impulse purchase nature of
the category encouraged retailers to discount them heavily. Which, it has to be said, was not the most imaginative solution in the world. Which was a pity, because if there was one thing that the chocolate coated biscuits market needed, it was imagination. And they were about to get it!
Because something big
had to change. Or to be more specific,
something big had to change for the one brand big enough to single handedly
change the course of the entire category.
And I think we all
know which brand that was.
If you ask the average
Australian on the street to name a brand of chocolate coated biscuit, most of
the time (I’d wager as often as 99%) they will say Arnott’s Tim Tams. Arnott’s
Tim Tams are pretty much what chocolate biscuits mean to the majority of
Australians. You don’t see Australians
teach foreigners the intricacies of how to do a Mint Slice Slam do you? So it may be surprising to hear that for all
of its fame, Arnott’s Tim Tams actually make up less than half of the chocolate
biscuit market in Australia. Although it
does come quite close. And is getting
closer. But we’ll discuss that in more detail later.
The fortunes of both
Tim Tam and consequently the overall chocolate biscuit market began to change
in 2013 when the brand started to focus on flavours other than the classic Tim
Tam Original, first by launching Tim Tam Treat Packs, small packs of Tim Tam’s
in a wider range of flavours than previously thought possible.
Anyone who thought
that this was as far as they could go was in for a rude shock. In 2014, Tim Tam brought Adriano Zumbo –
almost certainly Australia’s most famous pastry chef – to invent three new
flavours.
It’s only been two and
a half years since Adriano Zumbo introduced the Salted Caramel Tim Tam, but it
sometimes feels like there have been more flavours invented in those two and a
half years than in the entire history of, not just Tim Tams, but the entire
chocolate coated biscuit industry!
Here’s a quick rundown
of some of the various versions of Tim Tams that have appeared over the last
couple of years: Espresso Martini, Pina Colada, Strawberry Champagne, Toffee
Apple, Red Velvet, Three Beans, Chocolate Coconut and the rest of the Adriano
Zumbo range. Not to mention the whole
Chocolicious range which is becoming increasingly fancy itself with such
flavours as Velvet Mudslide.
So many flavours in
fact that they’ve had to divide their new releases between Woolworths and
Coles; Woolworths have received the “mocktails” range, whilst Coles have been
delivered Choc Banana and Choc Pineapple.
Not all of these
variations have been successes, but they have certainly helped keep the Tim Tam
brand at the front of every chocolate coated biscuit lovers mind.
Whether this strategy
has been a success has been a matter of much debate amongst commentators within
the chocolate coated biscuit industry; with rumours of late night meetings
between the Australian office and their American masters, apologising that
maybe this time – with the Pina Colada or Strawberry Champagne range – they went
too far.
And that seems to be
the common consensus opinion: Salted Caramel may have been an inspired idea,
but now things are just getting ridiculous.
Still, you can’t say
that the experiment hasn’t been at least a partial success. Value growth of
chocolate coated biscuits returned to positive territory, even whilst volume
growth remained negative and seemingly trending downwards. More revenue for less chocolate coated
biscuits; that must count as some sort of success.
The reason volume
growth has gone down is largely because those fancy new flavours of Tim Tam
come in smaller pack sizes, of 165-175g compared to 200g for the Tim Tam
original.
Meanwhile Tim Tams
have also grabbed a larger slice of the Australian chocolate coated biscuit
market. In 2015, Tim Tams made up 45.6%
of the market (according to the Retail World Annual Report), just less than half. Strong gains that have continued into 2015.
The
Tim Tam revolution is not the only thing to have happened in the Australian
chocolate coated biscuit market over the last half decade or so. There has also been the rise, and then fall of the Cadbury biscuits brand.
Cadbury arrived on the
chocolate coated biscuit block in 2013, and made some rather impressive early
gains, debuting at 7.6% market share. There was clearly a high level of
excitement about the possibility of a Cadbury biscuit – a chocolate biscuit
made by people who know about chocolate, with a range of popular chocolate
brand names to wack on them – but it didn’t really work out. Two years later and Cadbury’s now only hold
3.5% value market share in 2015.
Then there has been
the fall of private labels. Don’t fall
for the whole “private labels are taking over the world” line, because as Tim
Tam has convinced Australian consumers to expect so much more from a chocolate coated
biscuit, private label brands have fallen back.
Private label have declined each year over the last half decade, from
13.9% in 2010 down to 7% in 2015. It just goes to show that it is a trend that
can be reversed if you just make something a little bit exciting.
Not to mention possibly surprisingly cheap. Because despite all this text-book premiumisation and gourmet flavours to excite the "foodies", Tim Tam remains one of the least expensive chocolate coated biscuits on the market, largely due to being such a big drawcard for supermarkets that it's almost permanently on special.
No wonder it's slamming the competition.
It hasn’t been all
good news for Arnott’s though, since virtually every other non-Tim Tam Arnott’s
brand has also suffered. Simply because why would you eat an Arnott’s Royal
when you could have a Tim Tam?
Arnott’s Mint Slice
has been the exception to the rule. Slightly. Although even they have fallen backwards in 2015.
Which means that, as a result, Arnott's corporate market share has actually gone backwards, despite the success of Tim Tam. Although they are clearly still far far ahead.
So Arnott’s Tim Tam
have revolutionised the Australian chocolate coated biscuit market and returned
the category to reasonable levels of positive growth. Categories don’t operate in a vacuum though,
and most of this growth has come from the category that is chocolate coated
biscuits most obvious and closest substitute: sweet biscuits, a category whose
performance over the last few years could be described as shaky at best. And this is something that Arnott’s probably
isn’t too happy about.
What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Four: Which Biscuits Are Australians Eating? biscuits, Australia, sweet biscuits, chocolate biscuits, crackers, crispbread, rice cakes, rice crackers
So in the last couple
of posts we have established the following
But “sweet biscuits”
and “savoury biscuits” are still rather vague categories. So let’s have a look in
little more detail; at which types of biscuits the Australian consumer bought
in 2015 according to the Retail World Annual Report. Here we have a graph in the form of a
planogram, or as I like to call it, a planograph.
“Sweet Biscuits” in
this case include cream biscuits, plain biscuits and cookies, but not chocolate
coated biscuits.
What’s interesting
about these proportions is that they have barely changed over the last five
years.
Crackers & Crispbreads have lost a square, as have “Flavoured
Snacks” (ie Arnott’s Shapes and other similar snacking related brands).
Rice crackers and premium/entertaining (think of Waterthins Twists for example) have
gained one each.
And about half a percentage point market share appears to have drifted from Sweet Biscuits straight to Chocolate Coated
Biscuits, as consumers go for something a little more decadent.
But that is about it.
Despite the hustle and
bustle of the last couple of years – the Zumbo-concocted Tim Tam revolution, the
rise of Belvita, the fall of Ritz In A Biskit – the end result is that
Australians are largely eating much the same biscuits as they were half a
decade ago.,
Quite a lot has occurred
within each sub-category however, so let’s have a look at them in closer
detail, starting with Chocolate Coated Biscuits.
What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Three: Who's Eating All Of The Savoury Biscuits? biscuits, Australia, Arnotts, demographics, market segmentation
In Battle Of The Brands
Australia’s last post we looked at the sweet biscuit consumer; which
demographics enjoy chomping on a sweet biscuit.
Which it turns out is children and the elderly, but not so much those of
us in between those two extremes.
In this post, we will
do the same for “savoury biscuits”, a wide reaching category which covers
everything from Arnott’s Shapes to water crackers to rice crackers and rice
cakes.
Our first savoury biscuit consumption
graph – on what proportion of each age group eats a savoury biscuit on any
average day, and based on the ABS Australian Health Survey - throws up a few interesting factoids.
Savoury biscuits, like sweet biscuits, are particularly favoured
by the young and the old, with those in the middle not particularly fussed
about them.
Quite which savoury biscuits each age group consumer probably
differs wildly… not wanting to get too stereotypical here, but one can assume
that the 2-3 year olds are nibbling on a rice cracker, the elderly a Jatz with
a slice of cheese on top, which the teenagers stuff their faces with Arnott’s
Shapes.
And when I say “stuff their faces”, I mean it; look at that
graph!
Whilst the average savoury biscuit consuming Australian eats
just less than 20g of savoury biscuits each day (or about nine Arnott’s
Shapes), the average Australian teenager consumes about 42g! Or about 18 Arnott’s Shapes!
For teenage males
the figure is even higher: the average savoury biscuit consuming teenage
Australian male consumes 56g of savoury biscuits (most of which are probably
Arnott’s Shapes) a day!
That’s 24 Arnott’s Shapes! This of course may have changed given the recent hoo-ha about the "new and improved" (ie "made worse") Arnott's Shapes recipe, but it's too early to say.
Now let’s have a look at the male/female split.
Regardless of the teenage male obsession with Arnott’s
Shapes, the savoury biscuit market is primarily a woman’s world, with the ABS
Australian Health Survey telling us that the number of female savoury biscuit
consumers significantly outnumber their male counterparts.
This is particularly
the case for rice crackers and rice cakes, and anything promoted as being low
in calories.
When looking at the
volume of savoury biscuits being consumed, the Arnott’s Shapes guzzling male
teenage demographic swings that proportion to… exactly 50/50!
Now if we put both the
age group and the gender split together we can see again the extent to which
the savoury biscuit market is dominated by the female demographic, particularly
amongst the older age groups.
The world of savoury
biscuits (and sweet biscuits for that matter) is a diverse one. A broad church. To figure out which brands
are winning the Battle Of The Biscuit, we are going to have to look a little
closer at all the different sub-categories.
Chocolate biscuits, “flavoured snacks”, rice crackers, crackers &
crispbreads… and that is what we are going to look at next.
What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market? Part Two: Who's Eating All The Sweet Biscuits? biscuits, sweet biscuits, Australia, demographics, market segmentation
In this post we will
have a closer look at those 24% of Australians (all 5.2 million of them) who,
according to the ABS Australian Health Survey will be eating at least one sweet
biscuit on a typical day. Just to
clarify: this doesn’t mean that 24% of Australia eat at least one sweet biscuit
every day, but on a typical day, 24% of Australians will be partaking in the
consumption of at least one sweet biscuit.
These biscuit fans are
not evenly spread across Australia’s demographic landscape. As can be seen in the following graph, they
can be found in particularly large concentrations amongst both kids and the
elderly.
Just over 36% of
Australians age 71 and over eat sweet biscuits on an average day, a rate that
is only exceeded by kids aged between 2 and 8.
Those aged in between – teenagers, young adults, the middle aged - don’t
seem to particularly like sweet biscuits at all.
Mind you, as Roy Morgan Research pointed out, although both kids and elderly Australians share a love of biscuits (both sweet and savoury), that is about the only thing their snacking habits have in common.
And although teenagers
and young adults appear to be less inclined to eat sweet biscuits, those that
do eat quite a bit. As illustrated by this graph:
The average (the
median in this case, for all you stats/math fiends) daily quantity of sweet
biscuits consumed by all sweet biscuit consuming Australians is 26g. That works out to be just over one Tim Tam. Less than two Mint Slices. Just over three Milk
Arrowroot biscuits. Or five TeeVee
Snacks.
The sweet biscuit
consuming teenager/young adult on the other hand consumes an average of just
over 30g of sweet biscuits on a day.
That’s about one and a half Tim Tams. Or two Mint Slices. Or over four Milk Arrowroot biscuits
(although, let’s face, this demographic probably isn’t eating Milk
Arrowroots). Or seven TeeVee Snacks.
Now let’s have a look at the male/female split.
Regardless of whether
you look at it in terms of the number of consumers or the weight of the
biscuits they consume, it’s a pretty even split. There are slightly more female consumers of
sweet biscuits…
But those males who do
eat them must eat quite a lot because males are quite a bit ahead when measured
by the weight of the biscuits.
Now if we put both the
age group and the gender split together, then we can see how important each
group is in terms of the number of sweet biscuit consumers. And despite the low proportion of 31-50 year
olds and 51-70 year olds eating sweet biscuits, the huge size of these age
groups (there were 6.3million Australians aged between 31-50 years in 2011-2012
and 4.8 million age between 51-70 years, compared to only 1.8 million in the 71
and over age group) means that they remain, if not quite the core of the
Australian biscuit market, certainly a key demographic.
But have a closer look
at the gender split within the 71 and over age group, which shows a definite
skew towards the Granny enjoying a Monte Carlo or a Kingston with her cup oftea demographic. It’s nice to know that this demographic is still alive and
well.
And if the low proportion of “working age”
Australians consuming sweet biscuits is simply because they do not have time to
sit down and enjoy a nice cup of tea and biscuit, then perhaps there is hope
for the Australian biscuit market after all.
If the Australian Baby Boomer generation takes to the tradition upon
retirement, then maybe we will see another sweet biscuit boom!
What's Going On In The Australian Biscuit Market, Part One: Australians Are No Longer Taking The Biscuit! biscuits, Australia, scan data, market growth, Arnotts
The Australian biscuit
market is in trouble.
It - the Australian
“bickie” - used to be the default snack for generations of Australia. It was
the answer to the question of what to dunk into your cup of tea. Or coffee.
So proud were
Australians of their biscuits that any American visitor daring to refer to them
as “cookies” would find themselves at the receiving end of a stern correction:
“We don’t call ‘em cookies here you drongo! They’re called bickies
mate!”
Those days are
gone. Nobody says "drongos" anymore.
Nor do Australians eat
biscuits anymore. At least not in the numbers
they once did. There are simply so many
more snacking options for them to eat. Consumers are switching to other
snacking options, in other aisles of the supermarket. Healthier options. Or more decadent options.
There’s such a wide
range of biscuits on offer in your average Australian supermarket that making sweeping
generalisations is rather futile. Some biscuit categories are growing and some
are not. But as a general rule, those
biscuits whose major function is to be dunked in a cup of tea or coffee are
struggling.
To illustrate this
point, let’s see what the folk at Roy Morgan Research have to say on the matter:
Or take a look at this
graph depicting the volume growth of biscuits through major supermarkets since
2010, using data lifted – as is the case with most of my graphs – from RetailWorld’s Annual Report.
Well that, I’m sure we
can agree, is one hell of a depressing looking graph. Despite my choice of a sunny yellow backdrop.
Ever since the “golden
days” of 2010 and 2011, the volume growth of biscuits has been negative for
three out of four years. And in the
single year it was positive, it just scrapped through with 0.4% volume growth.
It’s hard not to be
pessimistic, since the key take away from a graph such as this is that Australians
have fallen out of love with the biscuit.
But why?
Here are some
thoughts: biscuits are used for a number of functions. For older generations they are a treat which
they can dunk in their tea (and are consequently at risk from the demographic
challenges also facing the world of tea).
For younger generations working in their offices, they are a snack. Something to get them through the afternoon.
Sadly for biscuits,
the number of snacking options is expanding all the time and many of these are
perceived as being at least reasonably healthy. As has been noted elsewhere, by
other people, Australian appetites are diverging in two different directions. Some
Australians are attempting to eat healthier, whether they be image-conscious
millennials or Baby Boomers whose doctors have just explained that they aren’t
youngsters anymore. Whilst others embracing the latest in freak-shakes and
Nutella-balls. Two trends that often reside in the same person.
It’s diet or
decadence. And if I’m going to break my
diet, you’ve got to make it worth it for me.
Sadly for Arnott’s their Assorted Creams range no longer really cuts it.
On the other hand,
the biscuits we are eating are getting fancier.
There’s never been a more
exciting time to be an Australian biscuit connoisseur. As can be seen if we look at the value growth
graph!
Not a phenomenal
amount of growth, but hey, it looks as though biscuits may be making a miraculous
comeback, on the back of fancier biscuits!
All those Zumbo-concocted Tim Tams! And Arnott’s Twisted Faves! And fancy European brands of wafers, like Loacker
and Kras!
So let’s have a look
at the Australian biscuit consumer.
To begin with: how many are there?
Well, according to the
ABS Australian Health Survey (sadly from 2011-2012, there ought to be an update
in a year or so) on an average day, 24% of Australians will eat a sweetbiscuit, and 17.3% of Australians will eat a savoury biscuit. Or to put it another way, 5.2million
Australians will eat a sweet biscuit, and 3.7million will eat a savoury
biscuit.
(Now “sweet biscuit”
in this case - and in the case of the Roy Morgan figures also - includes plain
biscuits, cream biscuits, shortbread, chocolate coated biscuits and choc chip
cookies. “Savoury biscuits” covers
everything from Arnott’s Shapes to water crackers to rice crackers and rice
cakes.)
These biscuit fans are
not evenly spread across Australia’s demographic landscape. They can be found in particularly large
concentrations amongst both kids and the elderly.
And this is the case
regardless of whether we are talking about sweet or savoury biscuits, as my
next two posts will reveal!
