The braai report
The one ritual no recession, no trend cycle and no diet has ever managed to kill is getting bigger. Braai is up +22%, biltong +51%, brisket +36% — but the catered spit braai is in freefall. South Africa is braaing harder, outsourcing less, and quietly going gourmet over the coals.
The 60-second version
- 🔥 The fire is growing. Plain "braai" interest is up +22% off an already enormous base — this is the rare national habit that keeps gaining.
- 🥩 The meat got serious: biltong +51%, brisket +36%, ribs +27%, Texas BBQ +51%, droëwors +47%. We're treating cuts like a craft.
- 🧑🍳 But the caterer is out: spit-braai catering −27%, braai catering −11%. South Africans want to braai it themselves.
- 🍔 The smash burger gatecrashed the coals (+121%) — American grill culture is fusing with the braai.
Every country has a food that means more than food. In South Africa it is the braai — part meal, part religion, part the only event that reliably gets everyone in the same garden. So when four years of search data shows the braai not just holding but growing, it's worth asking what's actually changing around the fire. The answer: almost everything except the fire itself.
The unkillable ritual
The fire keeps spreading
Most enormous categories plateau — they're already so big there's nowhere to go. Braai didn't get that memo. Interest has climbed steadily across the whole period, a slow, broad rise that's remarkable purely because of the scale it's growing from.
Monthly search interest in "braai".
The takeaway: A steady climb off a giant base — the most durable food habit in the dataset is still gaining ground.
When a category this large still grows, it usually means the behaviour is intensifying, not just spreading: people braaing more often, and looking up more about how to do it well.
Four-year change across braai, meat and grill categories.
The takeaway: Smash burgers (+121%) and shisanyama (+99%) lead, with biltong, Texas BBQ and brisket close behind.
Two stories collide here: a homegrown surge (biltong, droëwors, shisanyama) and an American-BBQ invasion (brisket, Texas BBQ, smash burgers, smokehouse). The braai is absorbing both.
DIY nation
We'll braai it ourselves, thanks
Here's the twist that makes the braai different from almost every other food trend in our data: as interest in the activity rose, interest in paying someone else to do it fell. The catered spit braai — once the default for a big celebration — is in clear retreat.
Self-directed braai interest (braai, biltong, boerewors) vs catered options (braai catering, spit braai).
The takeaway: The DIY basket climbs while catered spit braai falls — people want the tongs in their own hands.
It fits the wider squeeze: when budgets tighten, the braai becomes the cheap hero — a way to feed a crowd impressively without paying for catering. Effort replaces spend.
The geography of smoke
Who braais hardest?
Braai is genuinely national — but the intensity per person tells a more interesting story than the raw totals, with the inland and coastal grill cultures running surprisingly close.
A braai basket — braai, spit braai, boerewors rolls, shisanyama, biltong — per million people.
The takeaway: Gauteng edges the per-person braai race, with the Western Cape close behind and KZN further back.
Gauteng's lead reflects its dense, social, function-heavy culture; the Cape's strong showing is its weekend-braai-and-wine lifestyle. KZN's lower figure partly reflects a different, curry-and-shisanyama food identity.
Average monthly search volume across the fire, the meat and the new-school additions.
The takeaway: The classic cuts still dominate, but "new school" smoke-and-burger culture is now a visible slice.
The treemap is the braai's identity in one frame: an unshakeable traditional core with a fast-growing gourmet fringe.
| Heating up | 4-yr change | Cooling down | 4-yr change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smash burgers | +121% | Spit braai | −27% |
| Shisanyama near me | +99% | Braai catering | −11% |
| Biltong | +51% | Peri-peri chicken | −4% |
| Brisket | +36% | Pulled pork | +1% (flat) |
The verdict
The braai got a promotion
The braai isn't just surviving — it's being upgraded. A nation that's tightening its belt is leaning into the one celebration it controls completely: cheaper than a restaurant, more personal than catering, and now infused with a global obsession over smoke, cuts and technique. The boerewors isn't going anywhere. It's just getting a brisket neighbour on the grid.
South Africans didn't fall back in love with the braai. They never fell out of it — they just started taking it seriously.
- Source. Aggregated South African search demand for braai, meat and grill keywords, monthly, June 2022 – May 2026.
- Growth. First 12 months vs the most recent 12. Province figures normalised per million residents (Census 2022).
- Caveat. Search interest is intent, not kilograms grilled; "braai" is a huge, multi-purpose term spanning recipes, gear and events.
References & further reading
Braai figures are PartyTrends' own analysis of the search-demand dataset described above. Sources below corroborate the wider context.
- South African Tourism / Heritage Day, National Braai Day background. britannica.com
- Statistics South Africa, Census 2022 — population context for per-capita figures. statssa.gov.za
- BusinessTech, The rising cost of a braai in South Africa — economics of the fire. businesstech.co.za
- PartyTrends, The Battle of the Provinces — the provincial braai & meat split. partytrends.co.za/blog
- PartyTrends, Food Stats — live braai & meat demand tracker. partytrends.co.za/stats