The £1.2 billion prepared produce market has experienced strong value (+6.9 per cent) and volume (+9 per cent) growth, driven predominantly by shoppers buying prepared produce more frequently.
Sandy Sewell, commercial director at prepared salad giant Florette, is understandably buoyed by yet more growth for the category.
He tells FPJ: “Prepared vegetables, fruit and salad are among the most popular categories which continue to drive growth. These results reflect the wider trend of consumers turning to convenience products, which is encouraging for the prepared category as a whole.”
The discounters, as with everything right now, have played their part in the market over the last year.
Alistair Whitaker, category director at prepared vegetable company Freshtime, says: “From a prepared veg point of view, the summer month sees a dip in sales as consumers swap to salad products. But prepared veg is seeing small growth year on year in value, but a bigger growth year on year in volume as prices are pushed down by retailers to compete with discounters.”
Bagged salads remain one of the leading players in the category. As Sewell notes: “The target audience for bagged salad is extremely broad, with the majority of consumers falling into the ABC1 women with children category.”
The last year has seen prepared salad suppliers having to compete with more and more shoppers attracted to the wholehead offering due to significant price reductions and strong in-store marketing.
But the crux of the prepared market, the convenience element, has resurfaced stronger than ever. As Sewell notes: “This year, we’ve seen shoppers switching back to prepared salad in replacement of wholehead, despite it costing even less than in 2014. This behaviour trend indicates that price only makes up part of the buying decision, and that convenience is also a key factor for consumers.”
For Whitaker, purchasing prepared veg is also driven by convenience, and has a “midweek usage bias”, mostly by one to two-person households, where “convenience and lack of waste are important factors.”
Recent promotions have seen Tesco doing a three-for-two offer on the majority of its standard prepared veg range; Marks & Spencer offering a two for £1.30 deal on single portion packs, which carry a normal price of 80p, and a two-for-£3 deal on bigger bags, which carry a normal price of £2 to £2.10; And Waitrose listing a three for £2.50 offer on single portion packs, carrying a normal price of £1 each.
Fenmarc director Kate Milligan notes that promotional activity across the market has been “relatively stable” over the past 12 months, as Tesco, Asda and M&S continue to opt for more long-term promotional strategies with cross category multi-buy promotions.
She says: “M&S and Waitrose have also been successful with seasonal meal deal activity, such as Valentine’s Day promotions – ‘Dine in for X’. Morrisons’ activity has mainly been driven by their ‘I’m Cheaper’ campaign, with prices on key lines dropping to £1.”
Sewell adds: “Promotions continue to play a vital role within the prepared category, acting as an incentive for new customers who may have not tried the product. Over the past 12 weeks, the prepared salad category as a whole has seen an increase in promotional activity, with promoted unit sales up seven per cent, and non-promoted sales declining by two per cent.”
Promotions might be driving sales and volume growth, but as shown by a recent Mail Online investigation, which claimed to have revealed that prepared fruit and vegetables contain fewer vitamins and are less nutritionally beneficial than their wholehead counterparts, the category still has a perception problem to contend with.
As Anthony Pile, the founder and chairman of prepared exotics giant Blue Skies emphasises: “People do pay a lot of money for fresh-cut produce, so they expect, at the very least, to have a quality product.”
Latching onto the growing popularity for prepared salad packs, Tesco has launched a range of new exotic salad bowls into its lunchtime convenience range, including a crayfish and mango salad, which highlights the influence and versatility of the prepared produce category across the wider fresh eating market.
No comments yet