2025 holiday planning: 3 strategies for gourmet food brands

For gourmet food brands, it’s easy to focus the bulk of your marketing budget on holidays like Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

But as a new year begins, there is an opportunity to leverage incremental revenue in the first half of the year around key holidays—including Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and Father’s Day—so it’s essential for gourmet food brands to market to consumers during these time periods.

We reviewed the 2024 transactional data of over 2,000,000+ contributors who shopped for gourmet foods in Epsilon's cooperative database to understand the opportunity and why it's critical for brands to leverage complete foundational data to identify and engage with their next-best customers.

We break gourmet food spending into four key categories:

• Meats and seafood
• Sweets and baked goods
• Specialty foods and spices
• Fruits and nuts

3 key marketing strategies for gourmet food brands

1. Kick off the year strong

To make sure you’re able to align your holiday marketing efforts with these key events, leverage consumer shopping data to identify trends so you can time marketing promotions with key buying periods.

For each of the key events in the first half of the year, shopping picked up four weeks before the event, peaking in the last two weeks.

2. Build year-round awareness

Instead of only focusing on the end-of-year rush, focus on campaigns that build year-round awareness so your gourmet food brand can capitalize on key events throughout the year.

This way, as consumers are shopping, your product or brand is more likely to be top of mind as they’re shopping.

3. Focus on capturing new audiences

To see the strongest results, target campaigns during quieter times to bring in new customers and reduce competition.

Gourmet food category breakdown

Meats and seafood

This category includes fresh and frozen cuts of beef, pork, poultry, fish, shellfish and other seafood. It also includes barbecue, smoked meats and sausages along with smokers, grinders and other home meat processing equipment.

The key consumer shopping periods for this gourmet food category align with Father’s Day, Easter and Memorial Day, so brands can expect an increase of sales in the weeks leading up to each of these events.

Top opportunities for meat and seafood

Easter

• This holiday generated the second highest percentage of gross revenue in the weeks leading up to it.
• 22% of 6-month buyers purchased during these four weeks, with one of the highest spend per household.
• More households start preparing for this holiday earlier, with buying activity reaching its peak in the third week.

Memorial Day

• This holiday is commonly celebrated with large gatherings and barbecues.
• The third-highest percent of first half gross revenue occurred in the weeks leading up to Memorial Day.
• The order curve shows that households accelerated their purchases as the holiday approaches.

Father’s Day

• The largest percentage of first-half purchase activity and spend occurs in the 4 weeks leading up to Father’s Day.
• This occasion often sneaks up, with many households starting to buy early, pausing, and then surging in the final week before.

Sweets and baked goods

We include items like decorated cakes, cookies, pastries, breads, flours, bread machines, baking supplies and other confections and gift assortments in this gourmet food category.

For sweet and baked good brands, Valentine’s Day is the biggest opportunity for consumer spending, with purchase activity peaking in the two weeks leading up to the holiday. Easter and Mother’s Day are the second and third largest consumer spending opportunities this category can plan for and leverage.

Top opportunities for sweets and baked goods

Valentine’s Day

• This market was most popular around Valentine’s Day with the strongest spend and purchase rates.
• Purchase activity peaked two weeks before the holiday (week 3), with strong purchase rates in the week before the holiday as well (week 4).

Easter

• 25% of the first-half buyers were active in the weeks leading up to the Easter holiday, with the second highest spend.
• The AOV was the highest around this holiday.
• Purchase rates by week followed a similar pattern as Valentine’s Day’s – with the peak occurring two weeks before the holiday (week 3).

Mother’s Day

• Nearly 16% of the first half revenue was in the four weeks leading up to Mother’s Day.
• 20% of buyers were active and had the second highest average order value among the holidays in the first half of the year.
• Purchase rates gradually increased and peak in the week before the holiday (week 4).

Specialty foods and spices

Our last category encompasses items like crackers, canned meats, snacks, popcorn, spices and seasonings, pasta, cheeses, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, other types of gourmet food, assorted gift food baskets, coffee and tea.

For specialty food and spice brands, Valentine’s Day and Easter are the biggest consumer spending opportunities. For Valentine’s Day, the most spending in this category occurred in the two weeks leading up to the event, while for Easter, 23% of buyers were active in the weeks leading up to the event.

Top opportunities for specialty foods and spices

Valentine’s Day

• Even though this holiday had the lowest AOV at $69, the most spend occurred in the weeks leading up to it compared to other occasions.
• Purchase rates were also the highest—with 27% active in just 4 weeks.
• Purchase rates climb steadily until they peak in the week before the holiday (week 4).

Easter

• This holiday was a close second in the percent of first half gross revenue.
• 23% of buyers were active in the weeks leading up to Easter.
• Purchase rates peak in week 3 and were fairly consistent for the other three weeks.

Mother’s Day

• This holiday came in third since it had the third highest spend and purchase rates.
• The AOV was higher than Valentine’s Day but was the second lowest at $74.
• Purchase rates steadily rise until the fourth week, just before the holiday, when they surge.

Fruit and nut brands

We include items like fruits, vegetables and nuts in this gourmet food category.

For this gourmet food category, Valentine’s Day is the biggest opportunity outside of Christmas, with consumers spending the most in the two weeks leading up to the holiday. Fruit and nut brands can also expect success for Mother’s Day and Memorial Day.

Top opportunities for fruit and nut brands

Valentine’s Day

• The spend and purchase rates leading up to this holiday were the highest among the five holidays.
• As Valentine’s Day approached, purchase activity ramped up, with the strongest purchase rates in the two weeks prior to February 14.

Mother’s Day

• The second highest purchase activity was around Mother’s Day.
• Spend per transaction (AOV) was one of the highest.
• Purchase rates remained steady in the first three weeks before the holiday, followed by a sharp increase in the final week.

Memorial Day

• With the third-highest purchase activity in this market, it also had one of the highest AOV.
• Since the marketing period for Memorial Day overlaps with Mother’s day, there were higher purchase rates earlier in the month than in the weeks right before this holiday.

With over 50 years of experience and coverage of nearly every marketable U.S. household, Epsilon Data is a trusted partner in helping marketers understand their consumers, personalize communication and activate across all channels.

Learn more about how to leverage insights like these to optimize your gourmet food strategy for 2025 and beyond.