Waitrose sales data published on July 28, 2026, shows British shoppers buying winter comfort foods in substantial volumes during a summer heatwave, with cottage pie sales up 110% year-on-year and strawberry trifle sales doubling (The Guardian). The supermarket has termed the consumer behaviour pattern "reverse comfort eating."

The data covers year-on-year sales comparisons across multiple product categories. Cottage pie led the gains at 110%, followed by strawberry trifle at 100%. Chicken korma rose 67%, while South African red wine and chicken and ham gratin each increased 68%. Chicken, bacon and leek pie sales were up 41% year-on-year.

Waitrose's recipe search data tracked parallel shifts in cooking intentions. Searches for spaghetti bolognese climbed 91%, toad-in-the-hole searches rose 67%, and rarebit mac and cheese queries increased 57% (The Guardian).

The sales spike in hearty dishes during warm weather runs counter to typical seasonal grocery patterns, where lighter meals and fresh produce normally dominate summer baskets. Stephen Parkins-Knight, Waitrose's senior innovation chef, is cited in the Guardian's reporting alongside the data release.

Food historian Seren Charrington-Hollins provided corroborating anecdotal evidence from a VIP event at the Llangollen Eisteddfod music festival, where demand for home-cooked traditional meals such as cottage pies and lamb hotpots remained high despite what she described as unbearably hot weather. Professor Rebecca Earle, a food historian at the University of Warwick, also commented on the comfort eating trend in the same report.

Simon Wood, winner of MasterChef 2015, identified the cost of living crisis as a contributing factor, arguing that economic pressure is driving consumers to recreate pub classics at home rather than eating out (The Guardian).

Earlier survey data from Waitrose provides context for the broader cultural attachment to these dishes. A OnePoll survey of 2,000 UK adults commissioned by the supermarket, conducted between 30 January and 3 February 2026, asked respondents to name their favourite comfort foods. Cottage pie topped the list at 11%, followed by stew at 10%, with steak and chips and jacket potato each selected by 9% (John Lewis Partnership).

That winter-weight dishes were already the nation's preferred comfort foods in a January survey helps frame the summer surge not as an aberration but as an intensification of an established preference. The cost of living pressure Wood describes adds a second vector: when restaurant meals become unaffordable, the dishes consumers replicate at home are the same ones they already identify as comfort. The heatwave, in this reading, is not the driver but the backdrop against which deeper economic and cultural patterns become visible.

The year-on-year comparison matters here. These are not small-base fluctuations on marginal product lines; a 110% increase in cottage pie sales and a 100% increase in trifle sales at a major supermarket chain suggest a meaningful basket shift, not noise. Whether this behaviour persists beyond the current heatwave, or is a transient pattern specific to this summer's conditions, remains an open question that subsequent retail data will need to address.

Several threads converge in this data: seasonal inversion in food purchasing, economic substitution away from dining out, and a durable cultural preference for traditional British comfort dishes. The "reverse comfort eating" label captures the seasonal paradox, but the underlying drivers appear structural rather than weather-dependent.