Bowled over: The New Popularity of Bowls

One of the most significant changes in meal and entertaining styles in recent decades is the rise of popularity of the bowl relative to the other dinnerware and kitchen items. It’s not just limited to one bowl type or shape. The trend seemed to start with ingredient bowls started appearing in cable network cooking shows and grew with the interest in ethnic cooking styles that involved multiple sauces, chutneys and flights of different variations of things like flavored hummus, flavored butters, olive spreads, infused olive oils and hundreds of other delicacies. Eventually mini-bowls became an impulse buy in multiple patterns and colors finding all sorts of uses including jewelry dishes. Eventually bowls of every size rose to become a significant part of the housewares and tabletop business. Bowls are the new mug in that, like mugs, they stand-alone as gifts, mementos and, at times, as three-dimensional greeting cards embellished with art or sentiments.

Mini bowls, an evolution of the ingredient bow, have become popular impulse purchases. Consumers especially respond to variety in colors, patterns, shapes and sizes.

Ingredient bowls made popular by cable cooking shows ushered in the huge popularity of bowls of all sizes and shapes. Seductive impulse purchases for lots of uses they became available in about every imaginable size, shape, color, material and style.

Mini bowls have become popular self purchase impulse items as well as gift items. Bowls with sentiments or inspirational messages are especially popular in this category and find uses either as table items or catch-all vanity items for rings or desk items for paper clips or keys.

Bowls of all shapes and sizes have become the core of the dinnerware business. Pottery and artisan looks are especially popular.

Bowls of all shapes, sizes, and materials have quickly become the highest volume item in both the housewares and tabletop departments of most retailers. Consumers can’t seem to get enough bowls and like the variety and like to mix and match.

Coordinating but varying patterns are an important part of the bowl trend as shown in these Farmhouse bowls by Godinger Gatherings

Bowls with patterns or textures on the inside are part of the larger trend to create the visual and touch interest it takes to bond with the item. Consumers are coming to have ‘favorite bowls’ the way they have a ‘favorite mug’

The current star of the show is what’s called the dinner bowl. A diner bowl is larger in diameter and a bit flatter than the salad bowl that came with a salad set. Consumers have found these large diameter low bowls so versatile that some manufacturers have started using the term ‘Everything Bowl’ in their advertising. Another manufacturer has trademarked the term ‘Blate’ or combination of Bowl and Plate.

The dinner bowl trend extends across all styles from artisan pottery to mid-century modern as shown in the Roulette bowls developed by DeWitt Kendall for Godinger Gatherings.

The dinner bowl evolved as an upturned plate as much as a new shape of pasta bowl.

The low, flat, dinner bowl has essentially replaced the dinner plate in many cupboards. Bowls with coordinating but varied patterns and textures are especially popular. Photo outtake shown as an amazing example of the work by Jenny Klooster of Hella Nashville. Photo courtesy Jenny Klooster.

Translucent glazed dinner bowls in a retail store. This is a perfect shape. The straight upturn on the sides prevents spilling when balancing the bowl on your knees.

Artisan pottery looks are important in the dinner bowl trend. Finishes and colors that vary from one to the other but still coordinate have been the most popular.

Versatility: More meals with fewer dishes -Restaurant dinnerware lines have long promoted large dinner bowls as single solutions to multiple dishes or even a way to serve all courses at one time in a single dish. Oversized, shallow bowls were easy to plate and carry to the table and offered a ‘Wow’ experience to the guest. Just as for a restaurant many consumers are finding that 4 to 6 dinner bowls and 4 to 6 cereal bowls covers them for more meal situations than the pieces in a standard boxed dinnerware set.

Extremely influential in the rise of the dinner bowl is electronic media. Three generations now have been conditioned to juggle a meal with television. Today meal time likely involves surfing NetFlix with one hand while checking social media on a phone with the other.

As electronic media entered the home people attempted a traditional dinner on a plate on a TV tray. This has evolved to dinner on the couch or floor with a dinner bowl that balances neatly on a lap or knee. Embossed textures prevent slipping and a high, straight side prevents spills from tipping. Photo is an example of the amazing work by Hella Nashville. Photo courtesy of Jenny Klooster.

A wide, low bowl is a lot more effective at avoiding spills during this juggling than a dinner plate. Even as we work to steer that time away from electronic devices and toward the table and each other there’s still something to celebrate here about how the dinner bowl has been making the dinner at home experience better whenever and wherever it happens. Here are a few reasons why.

Mindfulness – First People are deliberately going out and shopping for that ‘favorite dinner bowl’ to bond with the way they have their favorite coffee mug. Consumers are scrutinizing the flatness of the bottom, the height of the sides, the diameter, how much it holds, how it feels in the hand and how it sits on a lap. If mindfulness is one of the objectives, then the current interest in the pleasantness and serviceability of that household item seems to be well in that direction.

Avoiding Plastics – Another reason for the rise of not only the dinner bowl but all other shapes and sizes of ceramic, and borosilicate glass bowls is popular questioning of food safety of plastics for both food storage and microwave use.  Studies alerting medical concerns about BPA (bi phenyl acetate) and a long list of plastic softeners led to sweeping legislation in 2001 specifically concerning children’s products but since then a much larger stigma surrounding use of plastics as food and beverage containers has emerged. Many consumers are increasingly looking into glass, metal or ceramic bowls over plastic for food storage. The dinner bowl and all bowl shapes have been enjoying increased popularity as people have let go of their stashes of plastic containers. Consumers have gotten accustomed to removing foods from storage or take-out containers to microwave and enjoy them.

Demands on our attention are only getting more intense. The good news is that rather than eating fast food out of a paper bag or takeout out of non-biodegradable plastic more and more people are bringing their favorite bowl from home and introducing some quality time into the experience.

Bowl Meals – Bowl Foods, such as dinner salads, Pho, Quinoa bowls, and others which have risen out of ethnic cuisine and healthy eating trends had a lot to do with their popularity of the bowl as the primary dinnerware item. Many of these meals originated as bowl meals and the convenience and comfort is appealing of these bowl meals is finding universal acceptance and popularity.

Once found primarily in ethnic restaurants and haute cuisine presentations the bowl meal has become the staple of fast casual dining.

Bowl meals at home are the new ‘TV Dinner’. Part of a larger trend of Healthy Eating bowls are the perfect way to reintroduce quality and dignity into fast, easy meals at home.

Another important category in the bowl trend is table-to-storeage. Bowls that are trendy or dressy enough to be serving pieces on the table but come with lids have become a huge part of the housewares business and introduced a housewares component into the tabletop department. Bowls shown were developed by DeWitt Kendall for Godinger Gatherings

Even cereal bowls have become wider and larger to accommodate more ingredients as personal creativity enters everyday meals even in the most casual settings.

Bowls of different sizes, shapes, and materials are appearing at all levels of the market transforming much of the dinnerware business from a packaged goods or boxed business into an item-driven open stock business.