A meal-for-one saucepan has been outselling other cookware items at a rate of three-to-one at homeware catalogue retailer House of Bath.
The £19.95 saucepan, which is divided into quarters allowing the user to make a meal using one pan, has seen a sales increase of 51% in one week alone. The lift is attributed to the fact that more people are living alone. House of Bath is now planning to extend its single serve cookware offering, and predicts that it may create a new movement in cooking.
Kay Hutcheson, head of buying at House of Bath, said: “Our four-way pan sales show that people are not only cooking simple meals for one but preparing increasingly smaller servings. Shoppers are opting for our four-way pan because it is more economical to use. It requires less energy to heat, less water to wash and takes up less space in the cupboard.
She continued: “There’s no doubt that demand for single serve cookware is set to grow extremely quickly. However, cooking on such a small scale may eventually make traditional recipes in older cookbooks virtually unusable. They are all designed for meals of up to four people, and the volumes of ingredients they use can’t be easily translated into cooking for one.”