Each month, we choose a potential say-do gap to put to the test. Consumers may think they know themselves and their habits – but how well do they, really? We know survey data is flawed, and in previous experiments, we’ve seen where consumers’ best intentions break down in the real world. This month, our in-the-wild experiment is tackling the notion that most people prefer to cook at home vs spend on takeout. Do you think it holds true? Let’s find out.
The groceries were bought. Meal plans were made. Intentions were set — but the takeout boxes tell a different story.
Most people don’t think of themselves as someone who orders takeout 3-4 nights a week. They think of themselves as someone who cooks, who just so happens to order takeout on some nights. That distinction is exactly where the say-do gap hides, and something we’ve seen across other say-do gap experiments on stated vs. actual behavior. In this month’s installment, it’s what we set out to find.
80% of consumers say they cook more than half their meals at home. For food brands, grocery retailers, and meal kit companies, that number looks like validation.
Cook-at-home messaging, effortless restaurant quality meals in seconds, recipe content — it all points in the same direction.
But survey data doesn’t account for the long workday, a distracted scroll through your phone, hangry children (or hangry self), or the moment your partner texts, “what are we doing for dinner tonight?” and your mind goes blank.
We wanted to find out how well that 80% “say” holds up when dinner decisions actually "do”. So, we ran a test in the wild to find out.
The do
We created two ads and dropped them directly into consumers' social feeds, framed as an everyday text exchange between partners figuring out dinner — unbranded, unpolished, and deliberately ordinary.
Message A leaned into home cooking: “Let’s just cook at home tonight.”
Message B offered the easy out: “Let’s just order something tonight.”
Consumers had no idea they were part of a test. They scrolled through their feeds as they normally would. We measured click-through behavior as a real-world signal to find out what people really want.
Despite an overwhelming stated preference for cooking at home, our experiment revealed the real dinner dilemma.
80% of people say they cook at home, but when the choice was served up in real time, ordering out scored well above the Orchard Index. That’s a 40% gap between what people say and what they actually do.
The dinner decision is unique because it happens every single day, under completely different conditions. Some nights the fridge is full and the energy is there. Other nights it isn't. Surveys can’t account for that variability.
Cooking requires a plan, ingredients, time, and energy — all things that feel more available at 10am on a Sunday than in the middle of the week. When someone answers a question about their cooking habits, they're not standing in front of a fridge weighing their options. They're recalling the one time they cooked a dish everyone loved, or how they enjoy cooking shows and the idea of cooking — not how often they realistically do it. They’re speaking from their ideal self, not their everyday one. Those are two very different headspaces, and they produce two very different answers.
The format of our test was built to meet people in the moment. A text exchange at dinnertime replicates the real-world conditions where decisions get made. Tired, distracted, with a convenient alternative one tap away.
The intention to cook is genuine. It just has to survive the middle of the week first.
If your messaging leans on the home-cook identity, you may be talking to who your consumer wants to be, not who they are at 6:43pm after a long day.
And surveys can't tell you why the switch happens when it does. Is it decision fatigue? Not knowing what to cook? The specific friction of having to start from scratch? Those aren't the same problem, and they don't have the same fix.
For cooking and grocery brands, that distinction matters. For delivery and takeout brands, knowing when and why consumers lean toward convenience is the difference between showing up at the right moment and sinking budget into the wrong one.
The home-cook consumer isn’t lost. They just need to be reached before the order gets placed. Orchard’s in the wild testing identifies when and where those windows of opportunity exist — so your go-to-market strategy is built around the moment of decision, not the survey that missed it.