General Mills sees eat-at-home trend sticking

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - General Mills Inc (GIS.N) thinks that now that consumers have been eating more meals at home during the recession they will keep doing it, even after the economy recovers, and is also looking to older consumers to help fuel its longer-term growth plans.

"I think we are going to be able to hold onto them for quite some time because of demographics," Ian Friendly, chief operating officer for U.S. retail at General Mills, said, referring to more consumers eating at home.

In fact, General Mills started seeing a shift to people eating more at home about four years ago, well before the recession hammered restaurant sales.

That's one reason CEO Kendall Powell thinks the food industry's sales can keep growing at 3 to 4 percent even after the economy recovers, a rate in line with the company's long-term growth model.

Older people tend to eat more at home and as the U.S. population ages, that means more people should be eating at home, Friendly said. For General Mills, the hope is those people will be eating foods like Progresso soup, Yoplait yogurt and Fiber One cereal.

Also, during the recession consumers have purchased more General Mills items like Betty Crocker cake mixes and Hamburger Helper meal kits. Hamburger Helper has a long history of being a less expensive way for consumers to stretch their budgets, having been introduced during the recession of the 1970s.

(Reporting by Brad Dorfman; Editing Bernard Orr)