Stockholm / SE. (yab) New Year’s Day is known to be the day when Swedes eat the most pizza of the year. Eating pizza on New Year’s Day has been a clear trend over the past decade and has increased every year. On New Year’s Day 2023, Swedish pizza sales reached new record levels when sales tripled compared to volumes for a typical Sunday in December.
That Swedes love their pizza on New Year’s Day as much as they love their meatballs on the Christmas table is a long-standing fact. As the pizza has taken a natural place in Swedish society, its popularity and sales have grown with it.
According to statistics from fintech company Yabie, which provides POS systems for restaurants across Sweden and handles +100 million transactions annually, pizza sales increased 286 percent on New Year’s Day 2023 compared to a typical Sunday. The average bill also increased on New Year’s Day by over 20 percent at the same selected pizzerias.
«We see a clear trend that there is less beef tenderloin on pizzas this year,» says Mathias Plank, founder and CEO of Yabie. «We can also see that vegetarian options have grown strongly over the past year in sales volume, but still the Swedes’ favourite pizzas are still kebab pizza, margarita and hawaii.»
The statistics are based on a sample of pizzerias from cities of different sizes and geographical locations, from Stockholm and Gothenburg to Kristianstad and Umeå, to name a few.
«Another strong trend we see is that many more people are ordering their pizza online via their mobile phone, so-called mobile ordering,» says Mathias Plank. In the past, big companies like Foodora and Uber Eats have dominated the online ordering market, but today restaurants have more affordable options from local players, including Yabie.
«We already knew that Swedes love pizza on New Year’s Day, but we couldn’t have imagined an increase of almost 300 percent from an ordinary Sunday in December. The pizza makers had to work hard in the kitchen on the first day of the New Year,» concludes Mathias Plank.
The statistics are taken from aggregated sales data managed through Yabie’s POS system from randomly selected pizzerias in Sweden. The comparison data is based on sales during 1 January 2023 (first Sunday in 2023) and 11 December 2022 (second Sunday in December 2022).
Yabie is one of Sweden’s fastest growing fintech companies, consolidating the POS and payment solutions market with innovation and sales power. The cloud-based all-in-one product attracts everything from neighborhood taverns to Ikea and currently has over 7,000 customers in Sweden. Since its launch, the company has raised more than SEK 650 million in venture capital from Creades, Swedbank and NFT Ventures, among others.
