Sainsbury’s strives to support British soft fruit 100 per cent when it becomes widely available, says Sibbit. “We will be placing a strong emphasis on UK soft fruit again this year, giving it a prominent presence at the front of store, concentrating on strawberries in June and featuring raspberries in July.”
The UK commitment extends of course into other categories, most notably apples and tomatoes and is not simply about image. It is also crucial to satisfy the demand of the Sainsbury’s customer. He says: “UK fruit is actively sought after by our customers and they are prepared to pay for quality, domestically produced product.
“We are proud to be associated with our UK growers, and will again be communicating this to the customer through our punnet lids, which will give details of both the growers and the varieties. This form of marketing and presentation is extremely important to the Sainsbury’s customer, who likes to see the source and variety of their fruit - the entire farm to plate experience. They are not just buying a strawberry; they are buying a fruit with an identity, a specific variety, grown in a particular place.”
Sibbit adds: “British growers are very good at identifying where there are real opportunities in the strawberry market. They have improved their production techniques immeasurably to begin the season earlier and end it later and the demand is there to justify them doing that. Our customer feedback tells us that there is a general feeling that British fruit is fresher and tastier. Therefore it is up to myself and our suppliers to ensure that there is British fruit on the shelves for as long as possible, as long as the quality is consistent.
“The policy at Sainsbury’s is to provide dependable and extraordinary quality at sensible prices, and our strawberry strategy reflects that very well. We try to sell more Elsanta, the core strawberry line for UK retailers and the consumers’ preferred variety, than the rest of the high street. This is raising the bar in our core line. But looking for that extraordinary quality, we also have varieties in our Taste the Difference range that aim to delight our customers and give them a new eating experience.”
UK-bred varieties Lambada, supplied by Peter Wensak, and Ava, from the Angus Soft Fruit stable, are the most prominent varieties within the Taste the Difference offer. “They will be in-store in larger volumes this year and enable us to keep Sainsbury’s at the forefront of soft-fruit development in this country,” says Sibbit.
As its supplier base also includes The Summerfruit Company, with its Redeva breeding programme, and KG Fruits, in partnership with Driscolls - Sainsbury’s is well covered in this respect.
“We are encouraging growers to fit into the upper tier, by growing some of the newer and more interesting varieties, that are able to attract a premium because of their extra quality,” says Sibbit. “Already, the standard strawberry lines are vastly superior to a few years ago, and it is now a case of finding the best eating range of strawberries for the Sainsbury’s customer.
“There is only room for two to three varieties in the Taste the Difference range at any one time,” he adds. But over the course of a season, that leaves plenty of scope for niche types to make their mark.
Soft fruit is the highest turnover category within the Sainsbury’s fresh produce aisles in the summer months and its high profile within store reflects that. The “halo” effect, as Sibbit tags it, of maximising the volume of UK-branded fruit available, is vital not only to customer perception but to increasing sales across the produce business as a whole. “Soft fruit is an expandable category, there has been a huge uplift in sales in the recent past, but it remains an impulse purchase for many shoppers. The American ends will be well-stocked with strawberries and throughout the summer - whether people are planning to buy strawberries or not, if they see a good display of UK-branded fruit they will make that purchase.”
For this reason and others, the planning process is arguably more important in soft fruit than any other fresh produce category. Short lead-times, extreme perishability of the fruit and massive demand swings that can be brought on by weather patterns all play their part. Sainsbury’s has a close supply chain team, headed by Sibbit, a forecaster and a logistician, which is constantly evaluating and re-evaluating programmes, volume availability and emerging trends. “We have a very tight planning structure, which we need because we have a 95 per cent plus target for availability in all our stores. The supply chain shares sales and availability updates every day with the supplier base,” says Sibbit. “It has to be fairly transparent because we are dealing with products with such a short shelf-life. It is in everyone’s interest that we are as precise as possible, otherwise we could miss sales and opportunities to put more fruit on the shelf.”
New on the shelves this year is a mixed 300g punnet of blueberries and raspberries, 150g of each fruit. “These are the fastest growing lines in soft fruit and we are attempting to build on that success,” says Sibbit. The punnets will also contain collectable recipe leaflets, to attract yet more consumers into sub-categories that have increased their penetration levels significantly in recent years. He adds: “Customers may have bought raspberries for years, but never tried blueberries. This is a good chance to try a new fruit. We tried the recipe labels last summer and the feedback we received was excellent - the aim is to educate and inspire customers to consume a wider range of soft fruit.”
Recipe labels have also been used successfully on rhubarb and blackberries in the last few months, and this is a merchandising tool that Sainsbury’s will look to extend to other niche fruit lines. Larger packs of strawberries too, are in the offing, as the chain targets the barbecue, picnic and dinner party segment of the market.
To a certain extent, Sainsbury’s is reinventing the wheel with some of its merchandising techniques in the category, but the consumer has fallen out of step with usage methods for blackcurrants and gooseberries for instance - a gentle nudge back in the right direction could bring these fruits back to both lapsed users and a wider audience of consumers looking for additional ways to eat healthily.
Without a doubt, soft fruit fits perfectly with Sainsbury’s stated customer desires of “seasonality, abundance and engaging the mind”. Sibbit explains: “Strawberries for instance are the perfect fruit for those desires. They are obviously highly seasonal and we make a virtue of that in-store. They have a strong, high volume presence across the season and in terms of engaging the mind, the appearance in-store of the first UK strawberry volumes is the green light for consumers to switch their consumption habits from the winter fare of grapes and citrus to fruit that suits the summer weather and lifestyle.”
The perfect fruit for Sainsbury’s then and according to British Summer Fruits elsewhere in this supplement, the perfect fruit, full stop. The campaign launched by BSF has the backing of all Sainsbury’s suppliers, says Sibbit, and is also supported by the retailer. The Sainsbury’s magazine will carry quirky messages about the benefits of berries for the sex drive and in-store messages will be developed for later in the season to communicate this and other findings from Patrick Holford’s research.
“This is definitely the right way to go and we are right behind the campaign,” says Sibbit. “Trading over the last few weeks has been 20 per cent up year-on-year and we have robust promotional and increased availability targets in place for this British season. Everything I have seen to date leads me to be very optimistic about my first summer in soft fruit.”
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