While baby veg growers had their fingers burnt last year by a scorching summer that took its toll on plant maturity, this year’s woefully wet June and July has scarcely proved to be the godsend the sector was praying for.
“Production of baby vegetables has been badly affected this year by the summer’s heavy rainfall, and in some cases, depending on the crop, up to 30 per cent has been damaged,” Nigel Clare of Lincolnshire-based brassica specialist Marshalls of Butterwick tells FPJ. His firm offers a wide range of baby vegetable products, including baby cauliflower, mixed packs of baby cauliflower and broccoli, baby cabbage, baby red cabbage, baby white cabbage, baby pak choi, baby sprouts, mini turnips and baby romanesco.
Baby Chantenay carrot production has also run into a spot of bother this summer, according to Martin Evans from Nottinghamshire-based business Fresh Growers, which is responsible for 90 per cent of UK production. “We are all a bit confused about what the next few months will bring for Chantenays,” says Evans, who is also chairman of the British Carrot Growers’ Association (BCGA). “Obviously they are an extremely delicate crop and production is quite intensive. The vegetables are very reliant on sunshine for their flavour, sweetness and yield, and are traditionally a summer product, but because this summer has been more like a winter, we have had quite a few quality and volume issues.”
The Midlands has borne the brunt of consistent rain throughout June and July, according to Evans. “There has been a lot of flooding here, and we’ve seen July rainfall of 1,000 tonnes per acre. This cumulative total of rain is really a cause for concern.
“It has left us a bit confused - we have everything to play for going forward, but we need the weather to help us out a bit. We are trying to be optimistic, but we need to see two or three weeks of sunshine before the autumn to get a really wonderful crop. However, every week just brings more mediocre weather,” he says.
“The problem is that the flooding is a few weeks behind us now, and when we get to the autumn people will have forgotten that the main growing period for Chantenays was so badly affected. This crop has to go through until the end of May, and we will have a consistent hangover from this problematic weather until then, which will possibly dilute product quality. But people will forget the troubles we had.”
But weather difficulties aside, the industry seems confident that the baby veg category is in rude health. Foodservice supplier Fresh Direct views baby veg as one of the latest trends to be creeping up the popularity ladder within the fresh produce market. Originally mainly found in fine dining restaurants, baby veg is now available in supermarkets, airlines, bistro restaurants and top-end hotels. Imported from South Africa and France by Fresh Direct, the four most popular lines are carrots, leeks, fennel and cauliflower. The produce is picked when immature and young.
Fresh Direct sales director David Burns comments: “The consumer appeal for baby veg is that they are alternative and ‘cute’. From an operator’s perspective, baby veg offers more opportunities for presentation, as well as the chance to receive increased profits. Flagging these up on the menu as a prestigious product will create a higher perceived value, enabling operators to charge higher rates.
“The only factors previously holding back the growth of baby vegetables were price and availability. For many operators, the price difference between the baby version and the conventional product was a huge issue. However, over the years, increased availability has played a huge part in driving costs down, helping to bridge the gap between conventional and baby produce,” he says.
The market for Chantenay carrots has been buoyant over the summer, according to Evans, and Fresh Growers has been bringing in Israeli product to bridge the supply gap.
“This has not quite been the normal quality we would expect,” says Evans. “The carrots were about 90 per cent there - the flavour and shape have been fine, but the appearance has not been quite right. However, Israeli imports mean we have been able to keep our programmes in place.”
Fresh Growers has also made substantial investments into boosting the efficiency of its food chain this year, according to Evans, speeding up processes in a bid to get the freshest Chantenays possible to the market. “The further away we source Chantenays from, the more we struggle on the quality - you are talking minutes, not hours, with these carrots,” he says. “Baby Chantenay can be grown for 11 months in the UK, which people tend to forget. This is one of the first niche crops to achieve such a high level of production in this country, and when people are quibbling over small differences in size, they forget that it would have been processed to death if it had been grown in other countries. We are using precision growing techniques, so a certain level of tolerance must be accepted.”
The BCGA PR campaign has done sterling work in getting the message about Chantenays out there to the public, Evans believes. “The flooding and subsequent damage the crops have suffered is only one side of the story - we’ve got to get out there and engage with the consumer,” he says.
There are three key drivers that make baby veg such a popular choice with consumers, he continues. “The first is convenience; the second is the fresh and wholesome nature of the products, which, in its turn, cannot contradict the convenience element. Thirdly, the flavour of baby veg is very important - in the case of Chantenays, they have a sweeter taste and a smoother, crunchier texture than conventional carrots.”
Part of the appeal of baby veg is its innovative image, and the carrot industry is certainly cashing in on this with Chantenay. “These carrots are ideal for barbecues, and we are looking at recipe ideas where they can be thrown into rice or pasta dishes too,” says Evans. “One of the next things we want to do with the PR campaign is devise a carrot detox diet, and we are working closely with chefs to get ideas going for that.”
And it is not just supermarket consumers latching on to the idea of baby veg as an easy and convenient product. The advantages for the catering service of using baby veg over conventional are numerous, according to Burns. “In terms of preparation, baby veg can be served as a whole vegetable, which requires less preparation time, and also produces less waste, compared to the 35-40 per cent wastage that conventional produce can generate. It also offers easy portion control, making it particularly ideal for airline catering, which works on limited plate sizes.”
Evans insists that the variety baby veg brings to the marketplace helps explain why consumers, retailers and foodservice clients alike keep coming back for more. “Keeping the offer fresh and interesting is key,” he says. Fresh Growers will be launching a line of baby parsnips in autumn 2008. “This is a new concept and will be for a specific market,” says Evans. “Parsnips are a growing market anyway, and to this we wanted to add the elements of convenience and wholesomeness. We have been working on the breeding project for about six or seven years now.
“We will be launching a similar PR campaign for the parsnips to the baby carrot one. It is very early days yet, but we have got the Chantenay campaign blueprint to guide us.”
And looking to the coming few months, it looks like yet further innovation will be the order of the day for this category. Martin Levy, director of gourmet services at Fresh Direct, says he has seen a variety of different produce arrive on the market in recent times. “Baby turnips, red and white cabbage, Savoy cabbage, parsnips, kohl rabi, courgette (with or without flower) and beetroot are becoming more commonly used,” he says.
“I’ve also started noticing alternative, hybrid products such as golden beetroot and candy beetroot (swirls of red and white flesh), purple and white carrots and green tinted cauliflower (a mixture between cauliflower and broccoli). Operators can expect to begin seeing these more readily available on the market, as baby veg as a whole increases in popularity.”
But Clare says growth seems to have levelled out in the baby veg sector, with initial spurts of good demand and like-for-like growth now replaced by fairly steady demand all year.
He believes there even tends to be a slight decline in the height of summer, especially on baby cauliflower. “Demand on all our baby lines is steady at present, but with this year’s particular weather pattern, demand is outstripping supply,” he says.
“The main challenge we face going forward on baby veg production is increasing labour costs. The baby sector tends to be very labour-intensive, with high labour to product ratios, and the increase in labour costs combined with a reduction in skilled harvesting labour will be two of the major issues to affect this category in the near future,” Clare adds.
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