Already on the table: how the ready-to-eat food market is changing
Published on: Jun 18, 2026
Reading Time: 5 min
15-18 September 2026
Moscow, Crocus Expo, Pavillion 3
Published on: Jun 18, 2026
Reading Time: 5 min
At the end of 2025, the ready-to-eat segment grew faster than the food market as a whole. Against the backdrop of changing consumer habits, lack of production resources and the preparation of industry regulation, the category is becoming important for HoReCa, retail, distributors and manufacturers.
The ready-to-eat segment retains its leadership in terms of growth rates in food retail. According to AKORT estimates, in large federal chains, sales of such products have been increasing by about 30% for the second year in a row. This is largely due to a change in everyday consumer scenarios: shoppers are increasingly looking to reduce cooking time and include store cooking in their diet.
Data from the Center for the Study of Consumer Behavior of Roskachestvo confirm that the category has firmly entered everyday consumption: 65% of Russians surveyed buy or order ready-made meals for dinner, 57% for lunch. Demographic changes are also fueling demand. According to Rosstat, the share of one-person households has almost doubled in ten years and exceeded 40%. For such an audience, buying a ready-made meal is often more practical than cooking it yourself.
The Infoline agency estimates the volume of sales of ready-made meals in Russia at the end of 2025 at 1.12 trillion rubles, an increase of 18.5% year-on-year. The figure decreased by 10.5 percentage points compared to 2024. Thus, the market continues to develop confidently, but is entering a stage when scaling involves not only demand, but also a more complex operating base.
This is confirmed by NTech data. In 2025, the category added 12% in physical terms and 27% in monetary terms, while the entire food market grew by 1.9% and 13.6%, respectively. This gap demonstrates that ready-to-eat food is still developing at a faster pace and remains one of the most popular categories in terms of consumer interest.
However, further growth is increasingly resting on the market's ability to ensure the production of the required amount of goods: experts note a shortage of production capacity, especially outside the central regions, as well as a low level of automation at a number of manufacturers. A separate challenge is related to the short shelf life of products.
At the end of 2025 and according to the signals of 2026, several stable areas can be identified in the segment.
Retail is increasingly moving from the sale of individual SKUs to the sale of a ready-made consumer scenario: lunch on the way, dinner without cooking, office food, snacks out and seasonal solutions.
The growth in demand for healthy lifestyle products by more than 15% in large chains shows that the composition, calorie content and functional characteristics of the product are increasingly important for the category.
The development of frozen ready-to-eat food shows that the segment is starting to work not only as a solution for immediate consumption, but also as part of a regular household supply.
According to Infoline, by the end of this year, the figure may amount to about 1.32 trillion rubles, including VAT, which means an increase of about 18%. The share of the category in total retail food sales will increase from 3.8% to 4.1%. At the same time, companies continue to invest and work on expanding the range.
Separately, it is worth noting the expected regulatory changes. The Ministry of Industry and Trade has created a working group that is developing proposals for regulating the category of ready-made food. Thus, the document can become a starting point for further regulation of this industry. The position of the Association of Suppliers and Manufacturers of Ready-to-Eat Food, which advocates the introduction of labeling, is also related to the topic of market transparency.
Already this fall, specialists in retail and wholesale trade, the catering segment, as well as distributors and manufacturers of food products will be able to get acquainted with the new products of the section "Frozen Foods, Semi-Finished Products and Ready Cooking". The exhibition site will feature frozen meat and fish products, ready meals, frozen vegetables, fruits and berries, ice cream, frozen cakes and desserts, dough, semi-finished products and ready-made cooking.
In 2025, 138 companies presented their products in this section.
Sources: kommersant.ru, logistics.ru, new-retail.ru, secrets.tbank.ru, tass.ru
