Canned Tuna Industry in Decline, Blame Put on Millennials

Canned tuna brands like Sunkist and Bumblebee have been taking notable hits to their profits over the last few years. And who is the first group blamed for this economic downturn? Yep, you guessed it: millennials. What a shocker.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, few consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 have recently purchased any kind of canned fish or shellfish. However, the reason for this isn’t any kind of outcry against fish consumption. On the contrary, sales of fresh fish to millennial markets are doing just fine. Business analysts hypothesize that the reason is one of convenience. Namely, most millennials do not own a can opener, or if they do, can’t be bothered to drain the can and get utensils to eat from it. There are holes in this theory, though. Many canned tuna brands also offer their products in pouches, tubes, or pull-tab-cans, which are far easier to deal with, and yet these variations don’t seem to recuperate any losses.

Some food trend analysts believe that part of the problem is that tuna cans aren’t very fashionable or eye catching. They’re been a staple of markets since before millennials were born, so to many of us, they’re sort of like background white noise; just a static staple of a supermarket you don’t actually buy. Tuna brands have been shifting their focus a bit and marketing their products as snacks, utilizing millennial-approved flavors like sriracha. This ongoing downturn could be a harbinger of the end for ol’ Charlie Tuna.

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5 years ago
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