62% Rise in Millennial Dads Buying Groceries: Study

More fathers are buying groceries, according to a new study of consumer shopping from mobile shopping app Ibotta, with Millennials being more active shoppers compared with older generations.  

The study analyzed the shopping behavior of more than 90,000 dads since 2013. It revealed that Millennial dads are spending the most time in the grocery aisles overall, increasing their number of grocery purchases by 62 percent since 2013. The younger fathers in this age group (ages 18-24) are purchasing 25 percent more groceries than dads in older generations.

Men are making more trips to the grocery store each month – up nearly 5 percent since 2013, Ibotta found. Their overall shopping in general was up more than 10 percent in the last three years. While the number of grocery trips has slightly increased since 2013 among moms, the share of groceries purchased by Millennial moms decreased by 2.4 percent during the same time span.

“The data suggests that Millennial dads are playing an increasingly bigger role at home, taking on more domestic responsibilities such as household shopping,” said Bijal Shah, VP of analytics and data products for Denver-based Ibotta, which pays consumers cash back on their everyday purchases. “This marks a generational shift from older fathers who embraced traditional gender roles, and is bolstered by mobile-enabled commerce and younger dads’ savviness with smartphones and shopping apps.”

The study found that alcohol purchase behavior also shifts among fathers as more kids enter the picture. The general trend has alcohol-related purchases decreasing with each child. However, it isn’t dads with one kid who are buying the most alcohol; dads with two kids buy more alcohol than any other segment.

Dads were more than four times more likely to buy baby and kid snacks, cereals and beverages than non-dads. Further, presumably to capture all of the memories of being a father, dads were five times more likely to purchase cameras and film.