Report reveals how Kiwis like to eat - just 50 per cent say they cook at home daily

'Quest for convenience' driving more Kiwis to eat out or order in. Photo / Getty Images

Just half of New Zealanders say they cook at home daily, and a home cooked meal is most popular with old generations, a report commissioned by ridesharing company Uber reveals.

A survey of 500 New Zealanders of all ages and regions found that 15 per cent of Kiwis eat out at a restaurant weekly and 29 per cent opt for a takeaway weekly.

The report was conducted by Empirca Research on behalf of San Francisco-based Uber - the company runs food delivery service Uber Eats in New Zealand.

Seven per cent said they order food to be delivered via an app or online service weekly.

Three quarters of New Zealanders surveyed said they believed cooking at home was the best option but just 59 per cent of people said they enjoyed cooking, with dinner found to be the meal most commonly dreaded to cook.

New Zealanders living alone were found to be less enthusiastic about cooking compared to those living with others.

Breakfast was also found to be the meal most Kiwis skipped, and brunch was the meal of choice by millennials - especially on the weekends.

Lindsay Neill, senior hospitality lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, said the findings suggested many people where wrestling over the cost of being able to dine out and the convenience it offered as the life of an average Kiwi continues to get busier and busier.

"The survey encapsulates lots of things; not having breakfast which kind of implies a running out of the door, people are keen on brunch... I think it gives a really good age profile of the way Kiwis eat," Neill said.

"Young people have a different attitude towards eating, and that's showing up in the reasons why people don't want to cook dinner so much."

A third of New Zealanders indulge in "cheat meals" weekly and one in five New Zealanders said they never had a lunch break away from their desk.

Around 57 per cent of New Zealanders ranked convenience as a top priority, and said they choose foods that were easily available and quick to prepare. 70 per cent of New Zealanders eat dinner in front of the TV at least once a week, 35 per cent do so regularly.

Neill said New Zealand now lived in the age of "the quest for convenience", whereby people worked longer hours and were increasingly opting for takeaways, dining out or sitting at home and ordering food on an app.

Dining out took off in the 60s, Neill said, and was heavily intertwined with the accessibility and consumption of alcohol.

The 80s was when then boom in restaurant openings begun and has continued ever since then. Restaurants and hospitality venues have been opening steadily over the past few years, Restaurant Association reports show.

"We've always dined out but we haven't [always] had that boastful culture about dining out."

Uber Eats launched in New Zealand in early 2017. Photo / Getty Images

The second pivot in how New Zealand consumer food came around four years ago, and morphed into the new norm when Uber launched its food platform Uber Eats in early 2017.

Neill said he believed more people would move away from home cooked meals and increasingly rely on deliveries and dining out in 10 and 20 years' time.

"The quest for convenience will only increase," he said. "People are [cooking] in a begrudging way, as they rid themselves of that guilt they are going to take advantage of these things more.

"It's going to take a while to get out of that thinking and actually let go, for many people, the purse strings to facilitate that spending."

Other findings from the report show less than one third of New Zealanders regularly read nutritional labels and 15 per cent of people never pack food from home for lunch.

Most people surveyed said they preferred to dine out in small groups.