Easter came and went a week ago. Seasonal gifting dropped from 11% of all messages down to 5%. But one industry barely flinched. Food and Beverage stores still account for 18% of all gifting this week, making them the second-largest gifting industry behind jewelry. The holiday didn't build the category. The category just happened to include the holiday.
Seasonal gifting halved after Easter, but food stores held steady at nearly one in five gifts.
Friends Are Sending Lobster. Families Are Sending Baked Goods.
What makes food gifting interesting isn't the volume. It's the range. This week, friends are sending lobster dinner gifts with warm birthday wishes. Parents are shipping baked goods to family across the country with notes full of love. In Australia, gourmet pastries are arriving for birthdays with short, kind notes. In the UK, someone's mum is sending a portable smoothie blender as a pick-me-up.
That variety shows up in the numbers too. Birthday gifting leads all occasions this week at 36%, up from a 33% baseline. Just-because gifts sit at 26%. New baby gifts account for 11%. Food and Beverage stores touch all of them. A box of pastries works for a birthday. A jar of honey works for a thank-you. A care package of snacks works for a friend going through a rough stretch. Few other industries stretch across that many occasions with so little friction.
Nearly half of all gift notes this week, 46%, come from family members. Another 22% come from friends. Those two groups together drive more than two thirds of all gifting, and they're the same groups most likely to reach for food. Nobody sends their mother a generic gift card when they can send artisan chocolate. Nobody thanks a friend with a widget when there's a lobster dinner on the table.
The Mother's Day Signal Is Already Here
Seasonal gifting may have dropped overall, but inside that smaller slice, something is shifting fast. Mother's Day now accounts for 60% of all seasonal gift messages. Easter, which dominated just last week, is down to 15%. With Mother's Day in Spain and Portugal arriving in three weeks and the US, Australia, and Canada following a week later, the seasonal calendar is pivoting.
New baby gifting adds another dimension. The trajectory over the past four weeks shows steady growth: climbing from week to week and landing at 11% of all gifting this week, up from a 9% baseline. That sustained climb isn't a coincidence. As Mother's Day approaches, shoppers are already connecting the dots between parenthood, appreciation, and gifting. For Food and Beverage merchants, this is the window. Curated gift boxes for new moms, artisan treats for grandmothers, brunch-themed packages for the family table. The intent is building now.
What This Means for Merchants
Food and Beverage stores sometimes think of themselves as seasonal businesses. The data says otherwise. Nearly one in five gifts this week came from a food store, and the occasions behind them span birthdays, just-because moments, new baby celebrations, and thank-you gestures. That's not seasonal demand. That's a gifting engine that runs all year.
With Mother's Day four weeks out and already dominating the seasonal conversation, now is the time to build gifting bundles that match how shoppers actually think. They're not searching for "food gift." They're searching for "something nice for Mom" or "a treat for my friend who just had a baby." The stores that frame their products around those moments, with space for a personal note, are the ones that capture this wave while it's still building.
This week in food gifting
18% of all gifts came from Food and Beverage stores 36% of gifting this week was for birthdays, the top occasion 46% of gift notes came from family members 60% of seasonal gifting now points toward Mother's Day 53% of gifts crossed a border this week
