yfood Labs’ Post

Recent insights from Kantar indicate continuous growth in Premium Own Labels—it seems they're more than a trend and are reshaping the market. This is clearly reflected in the growth of PL requests on Kwayga 🚀🚀 Is your supermarket looking for new suppliers of private-label food & drink products? Use Kwayga to discover and connect with the best ones in the industry. Book a demo today! #MarketTrends #BusinessInsights #PrivateLabel #Retail

🥐🍜🍒 Foodie Tuesdays: The Grocer Awards Edition The ECJ team is excited to share our favourite brands that received a Grocer Awards this year: 🚀 MOTH Drinks - B Corp™: Making waves in the RTD market MOTH's tinned cocktails are revolutionising the RTD scene. Crafted with award-winning spirits, MOTH now dominates 70% of the ‘super-premium’ RTD market and 73% of UK grocery margarita sales. In 2023, sales soared to nearly £9M, with availability in 3,500 outlets including Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Tesco, and Morrisons. A can is sold every 10 seconds in the UK. 🥒 VADASZ DELI LTD: Creating a new superfood category, Vadasz's kimchi, fresh pickles, and ferments have come a long way from humble beginnings. Inspired by family tradition, Nick Vadasz launched Vadasz Deli in 2009. The homemade pickles quickly became a standout, evolving into a leading superfood brand. 🌽 LOVE CORN: Snack Disruptor Love Corn impressed the judges with its crunchy corn. This year, their lunchbox-friendly multipack tripled Tesco distribution and added Sainsbury’s, Co-op, WH Smith, and Ocado. Their clever branding and partnerships have led to skyrocketing sales and expansion into the US market with 12,000+ points of sale. 🛍️ Tesco: Supermarket of the year, Tesco celebrates a decade as Britain’s top supermarket, excelling in convenience, promotions, technology, assortment, availability, and overall shopping experience. With 19% naming Tesco their favourite and 65% showing definite interest in shopping there, Tesco also led as the favourite online supermarket with 25% of the vote. Who were your favourite Grocer Award-winning brands this year? Let us know in the comments. 🍽️ #FoodieTuesday #FoodNews #FoodandDrink #FoodTrends #TheGrocer #GrocerAwards24 #GrocerAwards

⬇ Not had time to catch up on recent retail news? We've got you covered with a summary of this week's top stories: ✅Morrisons has invested £15m in a new round of price cuts to more than 200 products, which it said would help customers facing the financial squeeze this January. In total, Morrisons said 1,000 items would have their prices locked for the eight-week period (from 27 December). 👍Better Nature Tempeh has launched a Smoky Tempeh for Veganuary to cater to growing demand for health and versatility in the meat-free category. The brand, which expands its range into Asda this month, is already listed at Tesco, Lidl GB, Whole Foods Market and Planet Organic Ltd. 📈Discounters Aldi UK and Lidl GB have both boasted of a record-breaking Christmas as hard-pressed shoppers looked to save money over the festive period. Friday 22 December was its busiest trading day ever as 2.5 million customers flocked to its stores. Lidl also said the 22nd was its busiest ever day, with about 4.5 million more people shopping with the discounter during December. 🌺 Zoflora has launched a concentrated cleaning pod intended to be mixed with water for use in a spray bottle. Available in Lemon Zing and Midnight Blooms variants in Asda stores. 🥗Biotiful Gut Health has made its first foray into ambient with a range of functional powder blends intended to be sprinkled over meals or mixed into smoothies. Products in the Meal Booster range comprise a blend of “billions of live cultures”, along with prebiotic fibre, oats, fruits, seeds and spices tailored towards addressing a specific health or wellbeing concern. #latestnews #newstoday #podtalent #supplychain #recruitment #london #manchester #international 

To win in retail it's not rocket science, you just be better than your competitors at the basics. Range, availability & price. You don't have to be the best at all three, but you can't afford to be too far off the pace. Focus too much on any one of these three & balance is lost & with it go Customers. Focus just on price & costs & standards go down in store, often range is cut. Focus too much on availability & waste goes up (fresh) or range gets cut (ambient). Focus too much on range (increased or decreased) & stores can look cluttered or dull. In short good retailing is about balance. There is often talk about how change needs to be radical for it to work. Have Sainsburys done anything radical in the past three years? Not that I can remember. Are they winning shoppers & growing share? Are they growing their profitability? Yes to both these questions. Is the City happy? No. It never it. The City is like most Buyers, it is never happy, it always wants more! Simon Roberts said their 'Food First strategy has delivered on its promise over the last three years, making Sainsbury’s a stronger business with a much sharper position on value and a major refocus on our innovation'. Aldi match is working, although still only on about 500 lines, not in all stores. It gets them closer on price in a basket. They are more expensive on the other 20,000 lines. Retailing about optics, not reality. How are they seen, what messages are landing, what does a Customer believe? Customers clearly like what they see in JS as more are going there each week. I am one of them. I sit in between an Asda in one direction and Sainsburys in the other. As a self-confessed foodie I know where I would rather shop. There are more interesting food products more often in Sainsburys than Asda. I am disappointed when I go in a smaller JS store where there is less range. This is one of the 'fixes' that Sainsburys will put in place. They will have more range in more stores. It is a balancing act, too much range & you can lose availability. Systems have come a long way since I was a Grocery Supply Analyst in 2000! They are more sophisticated in managing stock to ensure there is better availability when it matters to Customers. Out of the Traditional Retailers none of them, other than Sainsburys, are serious about their food offer. I know that Asda have their M&S quality tag line but their ranges are not inspirational or exciting enough for a serious foodie. JS are not at the same level as M&S but they don't need to be. They need to be the best of their immediate competitors. They have larger stores so offer more range than Aldi or Lidl. This is what their shoppers expect. If they just wanted the same range as Aldi or Lidl where do you think they would shop? Retailing is not rocket science. There is nothing wrong with being a great generalist, after all that is why multiple Retailers stood out in the first place, most of them just have forgotten this! #theretailmind #groceryretail

What’s driving the flurry of premium own label NPD? 1. The cost of living crisis has seen a big move to own label from cash-strapped shoppers, and we’re not out of the inflationary woods yet, (whatever the past government claimed), which will keep shoppers in own label a while longer. 2. As shoppers buy basics in Aldi and Lidl and go to Waitrose for “treats”, it makes sense for Waitrose to lean into own label premium ranges, as Waitrose can’t compete on price on essentials. 3. Tesco’s growth in premium own label will have made Waitrose want what they are having. M&S’s Dine In ranges are flying off the shelves. 4. Waitrose enjoys huge trust from Waitrose shoppers in its own label ranges. 5. As all shoppers go out to eat less frequently, it makes sense for all retailers to capture some of that at home spend. Which is why Waitrose has acquired meal-kit delivery service Dishpatch, restaurant-quality home dining. 6. Shoppers will trade up in ready meals/high-end meal kits as it’s still a fraction of the cost of eating out. 7. Expect this trend to premium own label to continue, unless brands start innovating again to fight back, eg Charlie Bigham's | certified B-Corp Tuscan Pasta Bake with Rigatoni, a new product in Waitrose. (This was delicious!) My further comments are in The Grocer in Stephen Jones analysis piece. Link to piece in comments. #npd #ownlabel #premiumranges #waitrose #asda #marksandspencer #tesco #dinein

Ahh - the usual cycle of Sainsbury's vouchers through the door. There must be a big shopping weekend coming up. We do most of our grocery shopping through Sainsbury's, a main shop every 2-3 weeks, online and delivered - we've signed up to their service for free delivery - plus occasional top-ups/one-offs. Every few months we get these Direct Mail "treats", to try and secure our shopping at key points in the year, so we don't get tempted off to Aldi or Waitrose or both. And through the power of Nectar they've presented us with 12 different vouchers, total value more than £10, all for items we buy pretty much every fortnight. Perfect for the shop we want to get delivered early next week... ...except... ...as per normal procedure with Sainsbo's, these vouchers can only be used instore. So, a bit less of an Easter Treat in that we have to schlep our way to the store and then cherry-pick out these items from all around the aisles of a store we only occasionally shop in. This happens pretty much every Easter, Christmas, and probably sometime in the summer too. And it probably makes me feel worse about Sainsbury's, not better. To add to the irony, there aren't any actual Easter Treats in the coupons, no incentive to buy chocolate, or flowers, or hot cross buns. It's all our very middle-class favourites: Earl Grey tea, fruit & veg, risotto rice, fizzy water, olive oil. They know how we shop. They know we spend thousands of pounds a year with them, probably 80-90% of it online. I'm pretty sure their models will show them that they have the majority share of our total grocery shopping. And we pay for the free deliveries. And our reward... is conditional on us doing something very different and going into store to buy things we get delivered probably 20 times a year. Sigh. #customerexperience #crm #customerrewards #grocery #retail #marketing #nectar #behaviourchange

Really effective floor stickers in this Tesco frozen food aisle takeover by Wheyhey. It certainly grabs the attention of passing shoppers, but the on-shelf display seems harder to spot as the same treatment is not given to the freezer doors/product shelves. Hopefully shoppers will take the time to actually find the product. Is this a great execution or does it fall a little short at the actual point of purchase? Tesco, Wheyhey, #shoppermarketing, #frozenfoods.

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝗣𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗻 You know you’ve hit peak grocery store loyalty when your weekly run for “just milk” somehow ends with your cart overflowing with cult-favorite snacks. Whether it’s the surprisingly fancy $5 cheese that makes you feel bougie on a budget, or that wine bottle with a price tag so low it feels illegal, ALDI has managed to turn food shopping into a scavenger hunt for the most passionate fan base in the aisles. Let’s face it, these aren’t just groceries—these are must-haves that have people talking more than the latest Netflix docu-series. So, are you team "Everything Bagel Seasoning" or are you hoarding boxes of "Red Bag Chicken"? Drop your ALDI obsessions below 👇- the weirder, the better. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gxcJz2mb Dave Cheatham, Darren Pitts, and our company Velocity Retail Group have collaborated with ALDI for over 7 years and are actively seeking new sites in Arizona and Nevada. Contact us to submit sites. #ALDIFinds #FoodTrends #RetailTherapy #CultFavorites #GroceryGains #RetailMarketing #FoodObsession #RetailIndustry #SnackLife

The drive to incorporate Food to Go into convenience stores has been a top priority in the independent retail sector, spanning facia & non-facia stores. Retailers are upgrading their stores to accommodate this trend, showcasing their confidence in various ways. However, the abundance of options and advice from different facia groups and companies often leads to confusion among retailers, resulting in choices that may not align with their customers or locations. Taking a cue from this year's SLR retailer of the year winners, Davids Kitchen, who have excelled in the Food to Go sector, independent convenience retailers can lead the fresh food offering, both for at-home consumption and on-the-go. Success in this area requires tailoring a unique food offering to meet customer needs, a journey filled with hard work and valuable lessons, as Keith, Dianne, and their team exemplify. While instant results may be tempting, perseverance is key, as seen in the six-year journey of Babas Kitchen in the Food to Go realm. Building a brand, instilling customer confidence, creating unique recipes, and believing in the potential of food to go are all challenging but essential tasks for retailers venturing into this domain. To all fellow retailers embarking on this brave step, remember that success in Food to Go requires dedication and belief. Good luck on your endeavors! Bestway Retail Bestway Wholesale Costcutter Umar Majid Antony Begley Scottish Grocers' Federation DR. Pete Cheema OBE

An update from Coles Group's Leah Weckert at this month's AFGC conference. Demonstrating once again that Value means more to shoppers than Price... At Coles, unsurprisingly, shoppers are switching into cheaper tiers within categories or switching categories completely. E.g. not including meat in the meal. So now's the time to drive Own Brand, Specials, Loyalty redemption (to extract value). Drive volume to achieve growth at lower ASPs. But, as shoppers opt out of restaurants and switch into grocery, it's vital to reflect premium opportunities in meals. Shoppers are trading down to then trade up. To find out which categories in Coles should be leveraging the premium opportunity, talk to one of our shopper experts today. #australiangrocery #shopperinsights #categorymanagement