Drink coffee after a meal, read before bed… Habits give rhythm to our daily lives, but they don’t last forever. One of them is also discreetly disappearing.
Have a little coffee after a meal, watch a film or series in the evening, read just before going to bed… These activities can be part of everyone’s habits. Some are perpetuated and others are gradually lost. Since the appearance of Covid-19, the lives of the French have changed and they have adopted new habits such as teleworking or more systematic hand washing.
The obligation to wear a mask has also had an influence on French consumption. One treat in particular suffered. It has seen its sales collapse since 2020. Purchases plunged by at least 20% that year, according to Le Figaro, while France was the second largest consumer country of such a product. Mainly chewed outside the home, this product has in fact been weighed down by the limitation of outings.
It’s obviously chewing gum. Highly appreciated for the good breath it provides and for its anti-stress effect, the chewing paste has not seen a rebound since the arrival of the pandemic in France and therefore for four years. It must be said that the French are also trying to reduce their sugar consumption. Some may have seen this as a way of limiting the amount of waste given, since the chewing gum often ended up on the ground once the taste had completely dissipated. However, they take on average five years to disappear.
The Mondelez group, which counts Hollywood Gum and Stimorol among its brands, felt that there were more “concerns around eating well and naturalness”. He also noticed changes in the “consumers’ in-store purchasing journey”. For this last factor, the company explains that chewing gum has always been placed near the checkouts to attract the eye while waiting and offset the annoyance which is conducive to impulse buying. Today, the expansion of self-checkouts and online shopping limits this phenomenon. It is also no longer a fashion among young people.
The brands selling chewing gum are well aware of this and have already reacted accordingly. The French subsidiary of the American group Mars Wrigley (Freedent) notably cut jobs in 2021, ensuring that “chewing gum tablets are literally disappearing from the European market”. The future of chewing gum may be in a more natural, less modified version. According to the French Union for Oral Health, it is possible to “consume up to 5 sugar-free chewing gums per day”, as assured by Professor Élodie Terrer, dental surgeon and microbiology researcher at Madame Figaro.