Food & Beverage Subscriptions Remain Niche, but Skew Young

Food and beverage subscription services have carved out a presence in the consumer market, but adoption remains limited and concentrated among younger generations, according to Datassential’s Modern American Spending report.

Among the subscription categories consumers currently pay for, restaurant or food delivery app memberships such as DashPass and Uber One reach 16% of consumers, while meal kit subscriptions sit at 7%, coffee or beverage memberships at 6%, and snack or beverage subscription boxes at 5%. 

In contrast, grocery delivery memberships, a more utility-driven food-adjacent category, are held by 22% of consumers, suggesting that recurring food spending is more likely to be justified when it is tied to everyday necessity rather than to dining or discovery.

Gen Z and Millennials are significantly more likely than older consumers to maintain food and beverage subscriptions across all categories, pointing to a generational shift that may normalize these services over time. Among Gen Z, 30% currently pay for a restaurant or food delivery membership — nearly double the 16% overall average — while 20% of Millennials do the same, outpacing both Gen X and Boomers. 

As these generations raise the next wave of consumers, that familiarity is already filtering down. According to Datassential’s Gen Alpha Update report, over half of Gen Alpha parents say their children can order food for delivery either independently or with parental approval, and nearly one-quarter of Gen Alphas ages 13–15 can do so entirely on their own. For food and beverage subscription services, that pipeline of digitally fluent, delivery-native younger consumers could represent a meaningful long-term growth opportunity.

Additionally, Millennials are the generation most likely to spend over $75 monthly on subscriptions overall, while Gen Z most commonly falls in the $50-$74 range — both well above the nearly 30% of consumers who aim to keep total subscription spending under $25 per month.

That budget constraint is a meaningful barrier. With more than 80% of consumers already paying for at least one subscription and most maintaining up to four at a time, food and beverage services are competing directly against streaming platforms, fitness memberships, and cloud storage for a limited pool of recurring wallet share.

Subscription inertia offers some protection. Only 25% of consumers review their subscriptions every one to two months, and 15% say they almost never do, meaning passive retention is a real dynamic in the category. Still, when consumers do conduct reviews, particularly under financial pressure, food subscriptions perceived as non-essential may be among the first to go.