On Friday 3 February I suddenly found myself being possibly the most sought after chap in UK fresh produce, as the spokesperson and general media contact for G’s, the UK’s largest grower and importer of iceberg lettuce. The national media were chasing for a view on the great iceberg lettuce rationing occurring in UK supermarkets.
UK consumers have become accustomed to world-class supply chains developed by mainstream retailers working in partnership with some of the leading food manufacturers and growers in the world; the days of being unable to buy something are almost unheard of. UK media were desperate to report “rationing” which even today, more than 60 years after UK wartime rationing ended, is still so emotive within our psyche.
To explain this situation you have to rewind six weeks. Over the weekend of the 16 to 19 December the growing region of Murcia in Spain suffered a deluge resulting in many open field salad crops being submerged and new lettuce transplants being washed away. Over the four days the region experienced up to 230mm of rainfall – the equivalent level that London had seen in the preceding six months. The region, normally almost desert-like, had not seen rain in the previous three years.
G’s, working with some of our peers in the industry, sought to draw UK media attention to the situation in the region, working with The British Leafy Salads Association PR agency. After a couple of days, it became clear we had to switch the approach from ‘Floods in Spain’ to ‘The Risk to January Diets’ as no one in the UK media was particularly interested in the situation in Spain during Christmas week, particularly following the terrorist lorry activity in Germany.
With the start of the new year, the issues were being compounded by the snow and icy conditions sweeping across southern European countries.
The mainstream media reported on this with good humour; the impact and significance to UK fresh produce supply was at this point missing from any reporting – much more fun to show pictures of snow on Majorcan beaches.
By this point the crisis was stating to become desperate and a few supermarkets started to put up signage for customers outlining that poor weather in Spain and southern Europe was causing availability issues.
As I sat with the team in Cambridgeshire, it was quickly becoming apparent that we would have to start looking at how we filled lettuce supply gaps with options from our contingency partners in Yuma, Arizona.
From the outset, we were clear as a commercial team that we were happy to supply American lettuce to customers. However, it would be significantly more expensive and they would have to commit to higher prices. As a consequence it was our expectation that retail prices would have to rise too.
As reported in the FPJ, Asda was the first retailer to move into American iceberg selling under the Tanimura & Antle brand at a retail of £1.20, significantly ahead of the Spanish product retail pricing of circa 50p. Over the next few days the rest of the market started to move into American and shelf prices surpassed the £1 mark.
We debated the impact, and it became clear that we were likely to get some media interest in rising prices. What we did not expect was Tesco and Morrisons to limit purchases to three per customer – they had seen small caterers and wholesale customers coming into stores to bulk buy lettuce and broccoli as the wholesale markets were now devoid of these products and prices were through the roof.
Later that evening, Dieter Lloyd of the British Leafy Salads Association called to say he was doing Radio 5 Live the next morning, after which he became a wanted man by the various regional BBC radio stations, completing an interview every 20 minutes – the poor chap told me he could not get out of his dressing gown before 11am. My favourite comment was that Dieter, or ‘Diet-er’ Lloyd as he became known, “must have waited all his life for a lettuce crisis”, and many people were amused that there even was a British Leafy Salads Association; Twitter was rife with people looking to join the association as members.
As we reviewed the pages of press cuttings on Friday evening, what became clear was that roughly 50 per cent of the media was reporting the story in a serious way and presenting the facts, while 50 per cent was taking a more humorous approach; however, it was really clear that social media comment was leading much of the reporting in the tabloid media.
Significant time was spent talking to The Sunday Times, as we expected a solid reporting of the key facts, the economic impact of the European produce market model and the devastating impact that the weather had wreaked on Spain’s growing region. Unfortunately, even they opted to take a more sensationalist and lighthearted approach to the story.
So what is the consequence of all this publicity? If “iceberg lettuce has never been so interesting”, what impact will this have on our market and the consumer view of our product?
The retail market for iceberg is worth £73 million or 161m heads per annum, with volumes up by 21 per cent since 2014. However, the average retail price has dropped in the same period from an average of 80p to 43p. Today iceberg accounts for 48 per cent of all wholehead lettuce sold, and it remains as relevant today as it was in the 1990s.
What is also clear is that iceberg continues to have an image crisis driven by the food media, who are more interested in on-trend vegetables such as kale, spinach, blueberries and sweet potatoes.
The benefit of this media attention is that as soon as you tell someone they can’t have something, they automatically want it more. Scarcity marketing is a tried and tested strategy, most notably used by Cadbury Wispa in recent years to drive interest in their product. So will we see a further increase in iceberg sales through 2017? Only time will tell, while at the very least we have a few new prospective members for the British Leafy Salads Association. Thank you, Twitter.
