HOW DO YOU SEE THE BAGGED SALAD CATEGORY?

If you look at the last 12 months, it’s been an interesting year for our sector.

We’ve had four or five years of double digit growth, but in 2005 it ground not quite to a halt, but it certainly slowed considerably.

The weather wasn’t good and we suffered a lot of media attacks, a lot of old news recycled.

I don’t think consumers take a lot of notice after the third or fourth time, but it muddies the water and it just puts everybody on guard.

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT SITUATION?

We as a brand had two choices, join in with the general doom-and-gloom or continue to invest and keep plugging money in, which is what we did and we’ve reaped the rewards.

If you look at the brand in the marketplace there’s a number of factors for its success, due to its quality and freshness, but the fact we support the brand is important.

Of course, it is easy to justify spending millions of pounds when the market is in double digit growth, but when times are tough you’ve got to carry on demonstrating that support as well.

DID THAT WORK?

When other people were saying the market’s dead, we saw 21 per cent year-on-year growth in January, which was fantastic.

Consumers look for reassurance. I think they have in the back of their minds that they read something about salads being bad for you. They might not remember the issues, they just think, aren’t salads bad for you?

Our brand stands for consistency and that helps us, but we need to keep getting those messages across.

Some of the letters we get in at Florette are incredible, some consumers have asked “is it true that salads cause cancer” or “is it dangerous to eat red salad leaves?” It just makes us wonder, where has this come from?

We’ve just got to put out some good messages - it’s not particularly sexy, but we’ve got to get the right messages across.

We’ve got some good, independent science on chlorine, nutrition and modified atmosphere packaging, which we developed with the Fresh Prepared Salad Producers Group, which we are members of.

For example, to consume as much chlorine as in a glass of water, you’d have to eat 900 grammes of salad - you’d effectively have to eat a table full of salad to get as much chlorine as a glass of water. We, as an industry, are not here to poison people or sell poor quality food!

ARE THOSE MESSAGES GETTING THROUGH?

We’ve got to be careful as an industry not to have a knee-jerk response to these kind of things, we’ve got to be confident in our systems. We’ve got to say to people the reason we do this is to give you the best quality product.

To say, “let’s stop washing them” will leave us with salmonella to deal with, and that’s a far more emotive issue. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

A lot of the stories have just come about because of great soundbites - I think one said salads are washed in chlorine that’s 20 times stronger than a swimming pool. They don’t say its then rinsed and rinsed and contains less than a glass of tap water. It’s not as sexy a headline.

With MAP, they say things like it’s packed in a cocktail of gasses. It’s all very dramatic stuff, but we’re breathing a cocktail of gases ourselves, all the time.

WITH THE NEGATIVE ATTENTION AND DROP IN SALES, HAVE RETAILERS TURNED THEIR BACKS?

Retailers aren’t turning away from it, but they have reduced the range.

They’re driven to get the maximum return for every square meter of shelving, and if the market isn’t showing growth then they’ll naturally reduce the space given to it and put in products that are selling. So because bagged salad slowed down, it didn’t offer them the same return.

WHERE IS THE GROWTH COMING FROM?

I think there’s a lot of scope for bagged salad in wholesale, and foodservice is another massive area for growth, but I still think there’s a lot of growth left at the retail end too.

It’s still a relatively young market, although it seems like it’s been here forever. With the percentages of the population buying bagged salads, there’s still scope to bring more in.

And with that in mind, there’s never been a better time. You can’t avoid messages about healthy eating and that means we have to start pushing, not just bagged salads, but the category as a whole.

The big challenge is to come up with a joined up way of doing that. We need a joined up message.

WHY HAVEN’T YOU JOINED THE EAT IN COLOUR SCHEME?

It’s purely a budgetary thing. We have a branded PR campaign and we need to understand what the message will be with Eat in Colour to make sure we’re not treading on each others toes.

We’re interested in getting involved, we just need a clearer picture of what is planned.

WHY ARE THE MULTIPLES NOT KEEN ON BRANDS?

I wouldn’t say the retailers aren’t keen on brands, but every product has got to justify its shelf space.

Retailers spend a lot of money developing their own brands, and as a result, they’re not going to just give away space because you have a nice name or fancy packaging.

WHAT IS DRIVING CONSUMERS?

The way the market is moving, our growth is going to come from the convenience angle.

People have got the message about healthy eating, but there’s still the dilemma about being too busy to buy and eat healthy products, and that’s where the Florette brand sits.

Part of the reason we’ve been successful is that we’ve always offered convenience, from how you prepare the product to pack sizes. Consumers still want convenience - they want to go and get exactly what they want.

DO YOU SEE THE MOVE INTO CONVENIENCE RETAILING BY THE SUPERMARKETS AS A THREAT?

I wouldn’t say we see it as a threat per se. We’re in the big multiples and the independents. What we’ve been keen to do is expand all sectors.

The independent sector is critical to us, it’s our heartland, where we started out and we’ll continue working with it. In the current climate, if you can’t get it right, you’re never going to get it right. You’ve got to offer consumers everything they need and make it convenient.

WHAT INNOVATION ARE WE SEEING IN THE SECTOR?

I think a big area will be salad kits, but taking them one stage further so they are meals in their own right.

That’s the big challenge for us to persuade consumers who see salad as a side plate or diet option and make it back into a mainstream.

What is key is to get to the situation that what is in this bag is my meal, I don’t need to do anything else. It must tick all their boxes.