Because of their versatility, mushrooms find their way onto consumer plates in a variety of forms. Eighty percent of buyers said they incorporated the fungi into recipes of various sorts.
Nearly 4 in 10 (39%) said they made mushrooms a side dish, and 34% said they served them up in salads. Favor for portabella mushrooms increased a bit this year, with 32% of buyers saying they preferred this large, flavorful fungi. But white/button mushrooms were still the most popular variety consumers purchased. Twenty percent of respondents said they didn’t have a preference when it came to mushrooms. More than eight in 10 consumers took advantage of sliced mushrooms in the past year.
The likelihood of a mushroom purchase increased according to income, a trend now in its fifth year. Shoppers in the top income bracket were the most likely to buy the salad vegetable overall, followed by consumers with three children in the home and shoppers age 50-58. The likelihood of a mushroom purchase slipped one percentage point from last year.
Nine percent of buyers always bought organic mushrooms. Twenty-eight percent of buyers said they purchased organic product at least some of the time, a number up from 24% last year.