Generational Breakdown

Understanding Generation Z’s content-consumption behaviors may be the key to unlocking future seafood sales. Gen Z, whose ages currently range from 11 to 26, are visual learners. Generally speaking, they don’t own a cookbook, and they can’t read a recipe. They watch influencers preparing meals on social media. This shouldn’t be a surprise. But dig deeper, and you’ll unearth that Gen Z may be more confused about seafood than you may think.

According to research presented at the Global Seafood Alliance’s Responsible Seafood Summit, Gen Z’ers struggle to distinguish between farm-raised and wild-caught. They perceive chicken as more environmentally friendly than seafood. And they feel more angst about our industry than other generations. What’s more, according to one authority on the habits of younger generations, Gen Z isn’t eating up food culture and media like Millennials are. They’re not the foodies we thought they’d be.

Beginning this week, select presentations from last month’s Summit in New Brunswick, Canada, are being spotlighted on the event’s webpage. This week’s featured presentation is from Matt Craze of Spheric Research, who shared some of the results of his soon-to-be-released report, “Seafood Through the Consumer’s Eyes.” The report is a quantitative overview of at-home seafood consumption behaviors and breaks down these behaviors by generation, and it’s eye-opening.

What’s more, three episodes of the Aquademia podcastfeaturing seafood-marketing guru Michael-Ann Rowe, Toby Corey of Cruz Foam and Margaret Johnson, New Brunswick’s Agriculture, Aquaculture & Fisheries Minister – all recorded in-person at the Summit – are available for download. Next up are 2023 Responsible Seafood Innovation Awards winners Benjamin So of Zeal Industries and Daniela Allerbon of AQUIT Corp.

So if you weren’t able to join us in New Brunswick last month, at least you’ll be able to soak up some of the content delivered at the event.