Fresh-cut fruits and vegetables are offering solid growth for India’s modern retail sector, according to some of the country’s biggest retailers.
Busy working singles and couples are driving the demand for the packages of fresh-cut produce, reported the Times of India.
“These make sense especially for a single person or a couple. They are real time-savers,” said Viney Singh, managing director of Max Hypermarkets.
Max Hypermarkets runs retail chain Spar, which plans to increases its fresh-cut category by 40 per cent this year.
The fresh-cut segment accounts for 10 per cent of fresh produce at Aditya Birla’s More stores, explained the retailer’s CEO Thomas Varghese.
“Cut fruits and vegetables at our stores are priced two to three times more than the whole fruits and vegetables, but find demand from working women and home makers alike,” he told the Times.
Packages generally weigh around 250g, and in most stores are priced 20-50 per cent higher than equivalent whole produce.
The most popular fresh-cut vegetables are cabbage, yam, pumpkin, okra, baby corn, beans and cauliflower. Assorted fruit packs are the most popular in that category, followed by fruits that are time consuming to prepare, the Times report said.
Fresh-cut has not been a growth category for all of India’s modern retailers – Heritage Foods, which runs the Fresh@ and Heritage Store grocery outlets, has totally removed fresh-cut from its offering.
“For every five packs that are sold, we found that we were throwing away ten, since the shelf life is shorter in this category,” said S Jagdish, Heritage Foods’ retail COO.
