Over the last few years, the working day stopped running on breakfast, lunch and dinner and started running on something closer to a series of alarms.

Italian food-to-go brand Coco di Mama has surveyed 1,000 UK adults to find out exactly when the nation’s cravings strike, as part of “Made to Be Craved,” a campaign marking the brand’s 15th year in business.

The official times are in: put exact times on it: a coffee craving at 7:44am, a lunch craving at 11:13am – nearly an hour before most people are contractually allowed to eat it – and a third pull towards food at 6:10pm, somewhere on the commute home. The data suggests that the traditional three-meal structure may well be ending.

It isn’t really about greed, or a lack of willpower, whatever the 88% of Brits who admit they’re not “sensible” about cravings might tell you. It’s about how differently – and how constantly – we’re now expected to eat around work.

Snacking has become the main event

For years, snacking sat somewhere below meals in the hierarchy of eating: a stopgap, something you did badly and felt slightly guilty about. That hierarchy is potentially over. Research reveals that snacking habits are shaped by tensions between health and indulgence, and between solo convenience and social connection, with snacking increasingly functioning as a lifestyle rather than an in-between habit.

Of course, environment matters. Coco Di Mama’s study, a third of respondents said they crave food more when working from home, purely because it’s always within reach. Crucially, younger people are driving the shift. Gen Z snack more than any other UK demographic when working from home, often averaging four snacks a day and using them to replace a main meal entirely, while Baby Boomers remain far more likely to sit down to a proper sandwich at lunch. It isn’t a discipline problem, but a structural one. When the kitchen is six feet from the desk, “lunchtime” stops being a single event and starts being a mood you manage all day.

The office lunch is fighting back – badly

The return to office has revived the ritual of going out for lunch, which had all but disappeared during the WFH years. OpenTable data shows weekday lunchtime dining rose 4% in 2025 as more businesses increased onsite working requirements, with diners also spending more per head on business meals year-on-year.

But booking a table for lunch and reacting to an 11:13am craving are two different things – and Coco di Mama’s research suggests most people are doing the latter. Seventeen per cent admit to Googling food mid-meeting, and a third have deliberately gone out of their way on the commute home to get something they were craving. Not everyone is comfortable admitting hunger to colleagues, though: 14% have told a colleague they needed fresh air, when what they actually needed was lunch.

Millennials give in, Gen Z opt out

Millennials are the most likely group to admit overspending because a craving got the better of them – 36% say so – and the most likely to order delivery for food they could have walked to and back from in the same time, at 52%. If the craving hits, they act on it, cost be damned.

Gen Z show the opposite instinct. One in ten skip a morning hot drink completely, compared with just 1% of Boomers – the only generation in the data more likely to cut a craving off than indulge it.

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