Not Seeing a Frozen Surge

While the lousy economy has discouraged consumers from dining out, it has not led them en masse to resort to frozen dinners — at least, not more so than they’d already been doing. Research by Experian Simmons shows the number of households that eat “frozen complete (TV) dinners” moving in a very narrow band since fall of 2006 (i.e., before the recession began), staying consistently a few points above 50 percent. There has been a slight uptick during that period in the number who eat frozen pizzas (presumably as a cheaper substitute for pizzeria pizzas), with that percentage rising from the low to the mid 60s.