Quick Fixes
Fresh Selections is Kroger’s new brand for ready-to-eat salads like Cobb.
Fresh, frozen or shelf stable, people are looking for short cuts to lunch or dinner, and retailers are looking for more ways to appeal to them.
Families as well as singles are in the market for food they can fix in a hurry, and retailers are reaching out to them with store brand products good for one or more than one – in fresh, frozen and shelf-stable products.
At Safeway, Pleasanton, CA, the Signature Café line of take-out food includes family-size entrees like Baked Chicken Tortilla Casserole and Chicken Penne Pasta ala Alfredo as well as individual entrees like Chicken Tikka Masala and panini sandwiches. Frozen entrees for two come under both the Safeway Select and Eating Right brands.
Health concerns and ethnic trends also figure in the mix. Eating Right at Safeway is devoted to lower fat, lower carbs and the like in its frozen and shelf-stable convenience foods, but Walmart, Bentonville, AR, has gotten into the act with a Lean Café line under its Great Value brand that includes standards like Swedish meatballs.
Fresh & Easy, El Segundo, CA, a far smaller retailer, nevertheless includes Eatwell Kung Pao Chicken in its frozen entrée lineup. Ethnic and organic items seem to be the way to go in convenience frozen foods, as witness organic Garden Vegeetable lasagne under the Trader Giotto’s brand at Trader Joe’s, Monrovia, CA. Other examples include Trader Ming’s Chicken Shu Mai dumplings and Thai Joe’s Coconut Curry Chicken Styx.
However well they may be doing at some chains, however, frozen convenience foods are losing ground elsewhere, according to Symphony IRI Group, Chicago, IL, which shows declines in both single and multi-serve store brand dinners at entrees at food and mass-merchandise chains other than Walmart. But it may be significant that multi-serve items outsold single serve for the 52 weeks ended 9/4/2011, $77.5 million to $58.4 million, and that the former slipped only 5.3% compared to 20.3% for the latter.
Private label refrigerated entrees racked up $126.2 million in sales for the same period, IRI reported. and while the increase was only 0.2%, it was an increase. Far more spectacular, however, was a 10.6% gain for private label refrigerated salads and cole slaw, with store brand sales reaching $745.8 million, or 26.1% of the total. Private label is also making strides in pre-cut fresh vegetables, although there doesn’t seem to be any market data available.
“Any fresher and you’d be picking it yourself,” boasts a promo by Kroger, Cincinnati, OH, for its new Fresh Selections brand salads. “With new Fresh Selections by Kroger Salads, eating fresh is in the bag! Our leafy greens are thoroughly washed and packed in special packages to maximize freshness. All you need to do is open, toss and enjoy.” Varieties include Cobb, Chef and Spicy Chicken kits, Romaine, Sweet Butter and Field Greens blends, Baby Spinach and Baby Spring Mix.
SFresh & Easy Kung Pao Chicken, Trader Giotto’s garden vegetable lasagne and Walmart’s Great Value Lean Café Swedish meatballs are among cutting-edge frozen entrees.
Salad kits have also spring up under the Fresh to Go brand at 7-Eleven, Dallas, TX, and the Farmers Market brand at Harris Teeter, Matthews, NC, Wegmans, Rochester, NY, offers a Mâche salad with a European green also known lamb’s lettuce that was introduced commercially to America by Salinas Valley enthusiast Todd Koons eight years ago. Supervalu, Eden Prairie, MN, meanwhile, has gone organic with Wild Harvest salads.
Retailers have also taken the initiative with pre-cut vegetables in user-friendly packaging. Examples include Kroger’s Carrots and Snap Peas under the Private Selection brand and Harris Teeter’s Ready Veggies French beans under the Farmers Market brand. Like fresh and frozen entrees, they can be popped right into the microwave. Wegmans offers fresh-cut vegetable specialties like Mirepoix, a blend of carrots, celery and onion.
Sales of packaged dinner mixes, many of them better known as skillet meals, languished at $17.5 million, a loss of 17,4%, while dry salad and side dish mixes were off 12.4% to $17.4 million, according to IRI. But macaroni and cheese mixes, outperformed them by far, with sales up 3.7% to $113,6 million. Some retailers, particularly Target, Minneapolis, MN, are rethinking the dry packaged convenience foods segment.
Lunch bowls, popularized by the Bowl Appetit brand, have taken a new direction at Target, Instead of standards like Garlic Parmesan Pasta, its Archer Farms line favors Cajun Style Rice & Beans, Penne Florentine, Five-Cheese Macaroni, Sesame Teriyaki, Couscous Primavera, Mediterranean Style Penne, Sicilian Style Lasagna, Vegetable Masala and Kung Pao Noodles.
Lowcalcook, a “busy college student” who was also working 50 hours a week and didn’t have time to make food from scratch, blogged thusly June 2:
I don't have the time to cook as much as I did before. So I just tried this Sesame Teriyaki lunch bowl that I bought at Target (Archer Farms) and it was way better than I expected. It only has 250 calories and 2 grams of fat. Score! It only cost around $2 if I remember correctly. It was really tasty and really filling. I wouldn't recommended eating them every day since they're high in sodium (900 mg) but they're good every now and then. They had a ton of other flavors so I'm excited to try them out!
Even before it launched its lunch bowl line, Target was known for ethnic dry packaged dinners like Vindaloo, an Indian specialty that includes a spicy onion-ginger curry sauce, basmati rice with spicy chick peas and mango chutney. “Stuart,” a blogger at Chowhound.com, found it “amazing,” adding: “It had the flavor of a top restaurant and the spice to make my nose run, who would of thought?” Coconut and Red Garlic curry meal kits are other examples.
Target also offers a whole line of specialty macaroni and cheese dinners under the Archer Farms brand – Homestyle, American, Italian-style Four Cheese, Sharp Cheddar, Buffalo style (made with Real Blue Cheese & Spicy Cayenne Red Pepper Sauce) and Creamy Tomato – all priced at $1.26. But for these recessionary times, it also hedges its bets with a four-pack of macaroni & cheese in cups under the Market Pantry brand, priced at $3.14 versus $3.99 for Kraft.
At most retailers, it’s the same-old same-old, as witness skillet dinners for beef or tuna. They may be marketed under store brands, or economy brands. Topco Associates, Skokie, IL, has sub-branded its first line Skillet Classics and it includes some novel varieties like Beef Taco (no tacos, just a seasoned taco sauce mix to complement the cheese topping mix), Salisbury Pasta and Potato Stroganoff (It comes with potatoes, but still calls for hamburger.). But Topco offers cheaper skillet dinners under the Clear Value and Valu Time brands.
It’s much the same with pasta and sauce and pasta salad mixes. Topco’s Food Club line includes Creamy Garlic and Cheddar & Broccoli pasta and sauce, and Pasta Salad Classics Italian and Ranch & Bacon. Big Y, Springfield, MA, which sub-brands its skillet meals What’s for Dinner?, also offers taps into newly-fashionable convenience items like Rice Pilaf, a rice and pasta mix.
