The humble soup has a moment.

This is synonymous with the iconic canned foods of Campbell's Co.. The food maker said on Monday that customers are increasingly snapping up its condensed soup and Mac and Cheese products while shunning snacks, a spending shift in part echoing the depth of the pandemic.

“Since the beginning of 2020, consumers are cooking at the highest level at home,” Campbell’s CEO Mick Beekhuizen said in a statement.

The company's snack brands include Goldfish, Snyder's of Hanover Pretzels and Cape Cod Chips, and in the past three months, snack sales have been 5%. Meanwhile, its meals and beverage sales rose 6%, driven primarily by Rao’s pasta seasonings and soup sales in the United States.

Despite improvements in consumer perceptions in recent weeks, many are very pessimistic about President Donald Trump’s economic direction amid the ever-changing trade war and are looking for bargains.

Beekhuizen told Campbell’s investors that families continue to “focus their spending on products that help them extend their food budgets and increasingly intentionally consider their discretionary snack purchases.”

"As consumers squeeze, snacks are losing their base, being squeezed by inflation, shifting spending toward necessities and more purposeful food choices," analysts at market research firm NIQ wrote in a recent note. "The era of indulgence, impulsive snacks is giving way to demand for value, quality and health."

In a recent NIQ survey, 42% of consumers reported lower purchases of snacks, while 37% said they were working hard to find a deal. Many said they have thought twice about higher-name brand snacks, instead choosing alternatives sold in convenience stores or under their own record labels in supermarkets for more.

Snack market tightens the market and Oreo maker Mondelēz recently sued Aldi for accusing supermarket operators of “blatantly” imitating some of their packaging designs in exchange for cheap improvisations from the iconic snack brand.

While Mondelēz says snack demand remains solid, Pepsico, which makes Lay's and Doritos chip manufacturing, says it is offering customers success at a lower price. "We may not feel better about consumers than they were from where they were three months ago," Pepsi CFO Jamie Caulfield said in April. The snack food giant also lowered its financial forecast for a year.

Food shoppers’ pursuit of value is also increasing the dollar general, who increased annual sales outlook on Tuesday and said it had a market share in food. Dollar store operators have made profits even when other retail giants, such as Target, sell groceries, struggled to attract budget-conscious shoppers.

The increasing focus on the cost of home cooking is almost double the price of groceries. Federal data shows that meals a year ago increased by 3.9% from the same period last year, while at-home food prices rose by only 2% during the same period, slower than inflation overall.

This disagreement helps explain why many restaurant chains have weaker sales. McDonald's reported last month that same-store sales have fallen the most since the pandemic, with the first-quarter measurement down 3.6%. Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, also marked weaker sales early this year, and Chipotle reported that its same-store sales were signed for the first time since 2020.

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said that despite the past year's efforts to cope with its earlier menu prices with value meals to resist its earlier menu prices, all but the wealthiest diners are increasingly moving away from the burger chain. He said that traffic for low-income consumers was “almost double-digit” compared to a year ago, and access speeds for middle-income diners were “almost the same”.

Kempczinski said the split illustrates a “split” economy in which moderate and wealthy consumers are “under the cumulative impact of inflation and anxiety about the economic outlook.”

Meanwhile, restaurant operators are trying to sell juices as much as they can. Some tend to have customers’ growing appetite for chicken, with a stylish look or both, thus refreshing their position.

These efforts may prove a tough battle with the grocery store aisle, where certain major purchase costs, such as eggs, finally relax. But as shoppers adapt to many refrigerator and pantry basics, they are not easy to not have it, but there are still signs of supermarket checkout. A recent lender survey found that more and more shoppers are buying funds for grocery stores through installments loans and lagging behind those bills.

Klarna recently said one of the “buy now, pay later” services, and its borrowers have a harder time to clear debt on the platform. A few months ago, the company became Walmart's exclusive BNPL provider and partnered with Doordash to offer installment loans for takeaway meals.