Waitrose sales data published on July 28, 2026, shows British shoppers buying winter comfort foods in large amounts during a summer heatwave, with cottage pie sales up 110% compared to the same time last year and strawberry trifle sales doubling (The Guardian). The supermarket has called this pattern "reverse comfort eating."

"Year-on-year" means comparing sales from one period to the same period the previous year. So a 110% increase means Waitrose sold more than twice as many cottage pies this July as last July. Other big risers included chicken korma, up 67%, and chicken and ham gratin, up 68%.

Waitrose's recipe search data showed a similar shift. Searches for spaghetti bolognese climbed 91%, toad-in-the-hole searches rose 67%, and rarebit mac and cheese queries increased 57% (The Guardian).

Normally, summer means lighter meals — salads, fresh fruit, cold drinks. Hearty, hot dishes like cottage pie are usually saved for colder months. Stephen Parkins-Knight, a senior chef at Waitrose, is cited in the Guardian's reporting alongside the data release.

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

Simon Wood, winner of MasterChef 2015, pointed to the cost of living crisis as a reason. He argued that economic pressure is pushing people to cook pub-style meals at home rather than eating out (The Guardian).

Earlier survey data from Waitrose gives more context. A survey of 2,000 UK adults, conducted between 30 January and 3 February 2026, asked people to name their favourite comfort foods. Cottage pie came first at 11%, followed by stew at 10%, with steak and chips and jacket potato each chosen by 9% (John Lewis Partnership).

The broader context here helps make sense of the summer surge. These winter-style dishes were already Britain's favourite comfort foods back in January, before the heatwave. So the summer spike looks less like a surprise and more like people doubling down on what they already loved. The cost of living crisis adds another layer: when eating out gets too expensive, people cook the same dishes at home — and those happen to be the ones they find comforting. The heatwave, in this reading, is not the cause but the backdrop.

The size of the numbers also matters. A 110% jump in cottage pie sales and a 100% jump in trifle sales at a major supermarket chain is a real shift in what people are buying, not a small blip. Whether this behaviour continues after the heatwave ends, or was specific to this summer, is still an open question that future retail data will need to answer.

Several things come together in this data: people buying winter food in summer, economic pressure pushing them to cook at home, and a lasting cultural preference for traditional British comfort dishes. The "reverse comfort eating" label captures the seasonal surprise, but the deeper causes look structural rather than weather-dependent.