Supermarket is selling grapes with flavour and texture labels to find out more about consumer preferences
Tesco is selling table grapes labelled with their taste or texture to try to better understand what shoppers prefer. The retailer has teamed up with supplier AMT Fresh and Bloom Fresh to introduce three types of packing, categorising the grapes by either tropical flavour, candy flavour or crunchiness.
The Jaffa-branded grapes are available in 220 stores and are being sold alongside Tesco’s existing range of table grapes.
Tesco points out that other fruits, such as apples, are sold by variety, helping customers to know what to expect with each purchase.
The supermarket said it hopes to learn more about shopper preferences through the trial and could look to expand the range if the trial is successful. Early feedback shows that UK shoppers favour their grapes primarily by crunchy texture, next by tropical flavour and lastly by candy flavour.
Tesco fruit technical manager James Cackett commented: “If you ask anyone how many grape varieties there are, most people are likely to tell you three – red, green and black. And that was pretty much the case until the turn of the century when fruit breeders began looking at how to naturally improve flavour, crunchiness and sweetness, which is a wholly natural process, to deliver better quality grapes all round.
“Now with the advance in breeding technology we have the possibility to draw from many hundreds of new grape varieties which will allow us to deliver exactly what our customers want, and that’s the reason why we have set up these trials.”
Rachel Botha, head of commercial at AMT Fresh, said: “This project, which we are implementing with Tesco through the Jaffa brand, is the most far-reaching research ever undertaken in the UK to understand British consumers’ table grape-eating preferences, redefining the way they are segmented and marketed.
“We are working with the world’s foremost fruit breeding companies to supply the grapes that British shoppers want to consistently see on supermarket shelves.
“Thanks to advances in technology we now have the ability to do just that.”
She said that the trial “reflects the strengths of our breeding programmes, the commitment of growers eager to explore new possibilities, and Tesco’s openness to pioneering shopper-focused initiatives”.
