The need to innovate is a challenge the fresh produce industry has risen to very well. Indeed, the sector is a very good example of staying ahead of the game. There have been significant changes in recent years, with bagged salad leaves, heritage apples and a string of new tomato segments leading the way.
Development trends, first and foremost, to come through supermarket suppliers. Their product development is all about turning a raw product into something that people will buy. But at the extreme of the supply chain, farmers and growers are consistently trying to move away from commodity crops.
One person who believes passionately in producing new and more exciting products is Martin Evans, managing director of Freshgro, a producer of Chantenay. The way to start thinking about what new products people will buy is to look at what they’re buying now, he says. “Go shopping yourself,” he advises. “I’m fascinated to find out what people buy. It demonstrates their lifestyle; the type of meat, the type of wine.”
The process of doing the weekly shop involves a series of impulse purchases. “You spend 20 minutes a week, at least I do. I shop like a bulldozer,” says Evans. “In that 20 minutes, I make more decisions than at any other time.”
It was a supermarket visit that convinced him of the extent of the challenge facing the industry. “Two or three years ago I was in a Safeway in Leicester and I realised what people were doing was coming in and buying bananas, bagged salad and pizza,” he says. “They were doing it without thinking. It suggested to me one vital ingredient - convenience.
“I believe convenience comes in because we’re too lazy to make decisions about what we want. It’s more along the lines of ‘I’m used to that’ or ‘I’ll have that’. Bananas, and bagged salad and pizza are all very convenient. We’re too lazy to do the thinking.”
Dealing with the time-poor consumer remains a key driver. “Vegetables don’t fit into that thinking,” Evans adds. “That’s the challenge. It doesn’t apply to broccoli and cabbage.”
The launch of the Chantenay carrot was based on four simple tenets. “We can identify it,” he says. “It’s unique. The word sounds good. It’s convenient.
“Chantenay is a natural product. In today’s world of manufactured food, it looks authentic.”
But, although the supermarkets claim to want innovation, it isn’t always easy to persuade buyers to accept it. “We tried to break down barriers in the technical departments of supermarkets,” Evans says. “Why can’t we celebrate its naturalness? It allows us to be a lot more innovative.
“What we all want is variety. Look at ice cream - the days of choosing between vanilla and raspberry ripple have gone. And if you look at the tomato sector - over the last 10 years it has diversified a lot. There used to just be one type of Dutch tomato. The same goes for potatoes. At one time all we wanted was a potato. Now you have to give people a lot more. You have to say what it’s for. You’ve got to give recipe ideas.”
The Chantenay carrot is an old variety which Freshgro has updated for a contemporary market. “It was the mainstay of UK carrots in the 1950s and 1960s,” says Evans. “It’s like the Mini. BMW took the Mini and gave it more appeal. That’s what we’ve done with Chantenay.”
Freshgro started by looking at how the variety needed to be adapted to a modern market. “People don’t want to peel it,” he says. “It needed to taste nice. It needed to be smaller so that people didn’t need to chop it.
“It doesn’t take all that long to peel carrots, but it is a stumbling block. It’s a psychological thing.”
Freshgro’s next new product was a parsnip called Piccolo. They’re also based on an old familiar variety, called Student. “Student tastes nice,” says Evans. “It is creamy.” But it still took some work. “What we managed to do was select it down by size. By doing that we made it more accessible.”
The company also set about helping consumers understand what to do with the product. “If you process parsnips they go brown and start splitting from the core,” he says. “We suggested some simple ways of cooking it and adding more exciting ingredients.”
The swede could be next for the Freshgro treatment. “They have a nice flavour but you need to be a rugby player to peel it,” Evans says. “As for cutting it up, count your fingers before and after.”
He believes that, alongside all taste and appearance characteristics, vegetables have to be enjoyable. “We have lost that. I don’t think I could eat the beef without the vegetables. It comes back to people shopping and what people buy with what.”
He confesses, though, to being bored with some modern veg. “I used to enjoy calabrese,” he says. “I don’t now. I hate broccoli. The thing to look at is why.” Sprouts were another example, he says. “I had some industrial sprouts at Christmas. I also had sprouts my father grew on his allotment. I enjoyed them. I started my growing career listening to old boys on allotments. We need to put that enthusiasm back in.”
That enthusiasm can be enhanced through a good old-fashioned dose of character building. “Let’s put the character back into food,” Evans says. “Food has got character and we need to use it. The retailers need character and depth more than anybody. They need the personal touch. Food is personal.”
Without a flow of new and more exciting products, the industry would be in trouble. “We are seeing a new generation of non-vegetable eaters,” says Evans. And the real secret is not to predict what the market will want, but to create something that people will buy. “Economic predictions can go badly wrong,” he says. “I’d sooner be part of the creation than part of the prediction.”
Success will not necessarily come easily. “Everybody goes on to me about Chantenay carrots,” he says. “But I have often been told ‘no, it’s not for us’.”
The supermarkets’ only means of innovation has been on price, but that just isn’t enough any more. “We’ve all become immune to BOGOFs and three-for-twos,” Evans says. In fact, a low price could be a disadvantage. “The biggest problem with carrots is that they are too cheap. It does not suggest a lot of care.”
As chairman of the BCGA, Evans has tried to put that point across. “I tell people we have got to change the perceived value of carrots,” he says. “What we’ve got to do is be positive about the marketplace.”
There have also been attempts to differentiate products in terms of food safety, but that could do more harm than good. “It’s derogatory to the whole market,” says Evans. “Food is historically, inherently safe. It’s only unsafe when there’s stupidity involved. Food safety is non-negotiable. I don’t believe we need to say any more on that - we want to be positive.”
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