This Popular Brand Sells The Most Single-Serve Frozen Dinners

The history of preserving food through freezing dates back to almost 3000 B.C.E., so we've had time to perfect the practice. To this day, frozen dinners are a standard food item in many American households, having solidified their grip on our society in the mid to late 1950s during the rise of television. The convenience and ease of a packaged frozen meal is hard to beat, and the quality of the food can be surprisingly good. Of course, it depends on the brand, and the brand that seems to be most popular with Americans is Stouffer's, according to a report published by Statista.

The global data platform reports that Stouffer's generated over 243 million dollars in sales in the U.S., and was by far the highest-selling brand over a three month period in 2024. Stouffer's beat out other top frozen food brands like Healthy Choice and Marie Callender's for the number one spot. The very first Stouffer's restaurant opened its doors in 1924, and the company got into the frozen dinner business three decades later. Some of the most iconic frozen dinner offerings from Stouffer's include meatloaf, Salisbury steak, lasagna, mac and cheese, a baked chicken dinner, and the winner of our Stouffer's frozen dinner rankings, chicken fettucine Alfredo.

Frozen dinners are a part of 1950s American iconography, and have a long and interesting history. It's actually Indigenous practices of preserving fish that inspired the commercial frozen food market we see today. The TV dinner became a common grocery item thanks to a turkey surplus at the Swanson factory in 1953. With an exorbitant amount of turkeys left over from Thanksgiving and no plans for what to do with them, the company adapted by producing the now-familiar aluminum tray frozen dinners.

Once the Stouffer's original restaurant was hopping, the brand began selling frozen dinners from its restaurant as take-home meals for those wanting an easy and convenient dinner. The company was acquired by the Nestlé corporation in 1973, which eventually expanded to produce the Lean Cuisine brand of lower-calorie frozen dinners in 1981. Although Stouffer's landed right in the middle of the pack when we ranked 20 frozen dinner brands, it's clearly a fan favorite. Beyond just single-serve meals, Stouffer's offers family-sized and party-sized frozen dinners as well.