What’s on your BBQ? Survey of British BBQ food shows consumers prefer pork and chicken
The August weather might have been disappointing but Britain’s love of barbecuing showed no sign of abating this summer. A survey of social media mentions has found that BBQ Britain loves its meat with pork, chicken and burgers top of the charts.
We used our social monitoring software to track a sample of online conversations of the terms ‘bbq’, ‘barbeque’ and ‘#bbq’ over a 10 week period between June and August 2014.
The subject of barbecues is certainly a hot topic on social media with 14,309 mentions of the target phrases across Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Mentions peaked in line with the weather showing a decline in mentions as the June/July hot spell turned into a cold August.
The survey then drilled into these mentions to find out more about BBQ food choices. This is shown in the chart below:
Meat was the most popular food choice and accounted for a massive 84% of all food mentions. Fish and vegetables followed at 6% each with cheese featuring in 4% of mentions. The research drilled down further to breakdown the core choices. This is shown in the chart below:
The top choices for what to cook were pork, chicken and burgers. Pork’s popularity is boosted by separate mentions for both sausages and ribs giving it 32% of mentions. Chicken was the next most popular choice at 18% followed by the burger (15%). In contrast prawns were mentioned in just 2% of the food conversations with only 4% mentioning fish in general.
Despite more interest in barbecuing and the influence of American styles, cuts such as ribs and brisket received very few mentions.
The results show that people love planning and talking about their barbies on social networks. What’s more interesting is the food choices: cheaper meats such as pork, chicken, burgers and sausages dominate suggesting that though the BBQ remains popular, budgets aren’t stretching to more expensive choices such as steak, fish or lamb. This also suggests that despite the variety of dishes that can be cooked outdoors, Brits remain traditional with their choices.
The really good news is that with the Met Office now predicting that warm weather could last well into September, Brits can expect to enjoy a few more weekend barbecues this year before hanging up the grill for good.
