Last week, CivicScience studied Americans’ favorite ice cream brands and their consumers’ attitudes toward the coronavirus pandemic.
This week, we’re taking a look at ice cream’s BFF — cookies — and we’ve found that it’s a world dominated by Oreo, with a full third of Americans saying they like the cream-filled cookies “a lot.”
But while Oreo is the 800-pound cookie in the room, there is cause for concern, as Gen Z is not all that fond of twisting the top off an Oreo. In fact, Millennials like Oreos at a 28% higher rate than Gen Z, Gen X checks in at a whopping 35% higher rate, and Americans 55+ like Oreos 31% more than their grandchildren.
To be fair to Oreo, this is a trend seen across nearly all cookie brands, with Gen Z lagging behind all other age groups. One holdout? Pepperidge Farm’s Milanos, where Gen Z holds their own with other age groups.
And outside of Milanos — which are most favored by the 55+ crowd — Gen X is the cookie king. This may be trite, but they were the first generation to grow up with Cookie Monster and the last generation to grow up without a billion channels and a DVR. Draw your own conclusions, though it is worth noting C is for Cookie.
Gender tells an interesting story, as unlike ice cream, cookies are slightly male-dominated. The exception — and it’s a big one — are Milanos, with women preferring them by a 15% margin over men.
When it comes to comfort being in public spaces during the coronavirus pandemic, Milano fans are once again the big outlier, with 92% of people who like Milanos at least somewhat concerned with going out in public, whereas nearly 30% of people who don’t like Milanos are totally fine being in the public sphere. Forget masks; Milanos may in fact be the big COVID-19 divider in our country.
On the sweet snacking in general front, cookie eaters, across all brands, report snacking more at anywhere from a 17 to 21 percent higher rate than normal. And much like ice cream, the percentage of cookie lovers who say they are snacking less is significantly lower than those who are snacking more. Will those numbers hold in a post-coronavirus — or at least a post-coronavirus freakout — world? Time will tell, and CivicScience will be watching.