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How quick commerce is rewriting packed F&B playbook
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Wednesday, 27 May, 2026, 16 : 00 PM [IST]
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Mrigank Gutgutia
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At times, the kitchen invites a quiet departure from routine, where flavours that rarely meet are brought together without the comfort of a set recipe. The choice is guided by instinct, a bit of trial, and a willingness to take a chance. What emerges is not confusion, but a sense of balance that feels both natural and considered.
Food, when you think about it, has always oscillated between discipline and impulse. Weekly grocery lists, monthly stock-ups, and a rather stoic acceptance of what was available nearby. Consumption was planned, almost ritualistic. Deviation was rare, experimentation even rarer. What one ate was, more often than not, decided well before hunger made itself known.
That paradigm is now being perceptibly dismantled. Quick commerce has not just entered the fray as another channel; it has begun to alter the very grammar of consumption. Consider the scale first. India’s packaged food and beverage market already exceeds $100 billion and is undergoing a metamorphosis in how consumers eat, choose, and experiment.
In addition to the growth, what is particularly noteworthy is the velocity at which preferences are mutating. Gen Z is treating protein not as a supplement but as a daily necessity. Millennials are poring over labels with a scrutiny that would have seemed excessive a decade ago. Even in Bharat, protein consumption is being reinterpreted as an everyday upgrade rather than an occasional indulgence.
Quick commerce has abridged the distance between intent and action. Categories that once relied on foresight now thrive on impulse. The channel already commands roughly 10% share in leading packaged food categories and is projected to expand its footprint nearly 4-5 times by 2030. In absolute terms, that translates into a $27 to $29 billion opportunity in food FMCG alone, growing far faster than traditional channels that are steadily ceding relevance.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the resurgence of ready-to-cook formats, although to interpret this as a mere convenience play would be somewhat myopic, because what is actually underway is a steady elevation of health from a desirable attribute to a non-negotiable baseline. Urban households, increasingly nuclear and time-constrained, are gravitating towards low-effort cooking solutions, but this shift is being mediated by sharper scrutiny of what goes into these products, with clean labels, fortification and nutritional balance assuming far greater importance than before. The ability to receive products within ten minutes does not create this demand so much as amplify it. It allows consumers to defer decisions without relinquishing their expectation of quality. This explains why a category like frozen RTC, already nearing $375 million on quick commerce, is not merely scaling but undergoing a perceptual rehabilitation.
Parallel to this is a transformation in beverages, where health, not convenience, is the primary driver. The non-alcoholic ready-to-drink segment is expanding rapidly, with quick commerce growing at over 100 percent, but the real shift lies in what is driving this growth, namely functional drinks, protein led formats and the packaging of traditionally fresh categories like coconut water. This demonstrates a consumer who is actively curating intake with health in mind. With the market expected to approach $40 billion by 2030 and India still under indexing on per capita consumption, the headroom is substantial, indicating a more enduring realignment rather than a passing phase.
And then there is indulgence, which quick commerce has managed to both democratise and intensify. Nearly half of the incremental growth in India’s chocolate market over the past year has been unlocked by this channel. What is fascinating is the emergence of entirely new consumption occasions. Late night, for instance, has become a structurally significant window, accounting for a disproportionate share of impulse purchases, often accompanied by a higher willingness to spend.
The old playbook, built on distribution muscle and top-of-mind recall, is insufficient. Winning in this environment requires an almost culinary sensibility. Knowing when to appear, in what format, and at what moment of need. It requires accepting that the consumer is no longer walking down aisles, but scrolling through possibilities.
(The author is a partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants)
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