Convenience, convenience, convenience - there is no getting away from what consumers want.
While people may be telling us they want to get back to the old-fashioned values of slaving over the stove for a couple of hours before enjoying a family gathering round the dining table, the reality is more likely to involve slamming a plastic packaged meal in the microwave and slobbing out in front of the television.
The figures speak for themselves really. In the last year, consumers spent more than £900 million on ready meals, with around an extra 31,000 packs being sold each month, compared with last year.
This rising trend is raising concerns among the authorities, adding further fuel to the obesity debate and has resulted in a new campaign from the Food Standards Agency which is calling on the industry to improve the health standards of its products.
Dame Deirdre Hutton, the new chair of the FSA, has vowed to shake up the sector, saying convenience food does not have to be unhealthy.
While the bulk of the FSA’s campaign is focused on reducing salt in the convenience food sector, the push for healthier content clearly offers opportunities to the fresh produce sector.
Not only is the health issue being pushed by the government, more importantly, consumers are beginning to demand it too. According to latest figures from market researcher TNS, the health message is now beginning to hit home.
Health is now the fastest growing motivator for consumers, but while that is good news, there is still a reluctance to abandon the old ways, and enjoyment still remains number one. Around 42 per cent of meals are chosen for enjoyment, compared with 20 per cent chosen for health reasons.
According to TNS, this is beginning to create a new breed of consumer, one that is demanding healthy alternatives to their favourite, popular everyday meals.
UK retail leader Tesco echoes that view. It says it is seeing an increasing focus on health from its customers.
“People are increasingly concerned about health and they’re looking for ways to improve without making major changes to their lifestyle,” says a spokeswoman.
“Not everyone has time to cook from scratch, we have to be realistic but they’re choosing healthier options. If you’re a busy mother with two kids and don’t have the time to cook, it doesn’t mean you can’t eat healthily and eat fresh produce.”
She adds that Tesco has always strived to have a good representation of fresh produce within its ready-meal offer, and its vegetable accompaniment range was extremely popular.
Edward Gough, md of Beacon Foods, a leading fresh produce ingredient supplier, says he is seeing a change in the market. “Health is definitely playing a bigger role. And it’s refreshing to see people looking for healthier product and that’s providing an opportunity - there’s an increasing scope for fresh produce in the sector.”
His company supplies fresh produce for a range of uses, from ready meals and sandwich fillings to pizza toppings. Lines include chargrilled vegetables, roasted peppers and steamed potatoes, to name a few.
“We aim to produce our products as healthily as possible. We take a pepper and roast it, we don’t add anything to it. We’re doing a steamed potato at the moment - what could be more natural than that?”
And it is not just vegetables either, he says he is seeing an increasing demand for fruit products, particularly cooked fruits.
“We’re definitely going to see greater demand for fresh produce, 5 A DAY is still being bandied about a lot, and people are a lot more conscious of it.
“But people still want convenience - we aren’t going to see people changing their lifestyle and spend an hour-and-a-half in the kitchen, they’ll still need convenience - so the products need to be there for them.”
One company aiming to provide such a service is Cook, a south-east based retailer which specialises in selling frozen ready meals, manufacturing the meals in its own kitchens.
The company recently won an award for its vegetarian meal range from the Vegetarian Society and is keen to build up direct connections with fresh produce growers.
James Perry, md, says that ready meals do have a bad reputation: “There are real problems for ready meals, although we wouldn’t consider ourselves in that light - we don’t really think of ourselves as conventional ready-meal producers.
“There’s definitely a case for our society being over-fed and under-nourished. There’s a lot of talk about empty calories - we need to be eating more nutrient-rich foods.”
He says his company does not consider its food to be health meals: “We’re not a health-food shop, but we see them as healthy - particularly as part of a balanced diet.”
The key to that, he says, is down to the raw materials and methods of production. “It’s all about the ingredients; it’s about how fresh they are and what quality they are.”
He says the company has taken on a new ingredients buying manager, Paul Homshaw, and is looking to source direct from producers to ensure its produce is as fresh as possible.
“It’s also about what you do with the ingredients. We mainly casserole, and that’s incredibly good from a nutritional point of view, as it keeps most of the nutrients in the veg.”
The company has invested significantly in keeping its customers informed on the nutritional front. A booklet outlining nutritional needs has gone down a storm with customers and is already on its third print run.
The company has also produced a series of league tables to show how each of its meals performs in terms of fat, saturated fat and salt content as well as calories per portion. One of the best performing products is braised red cabbage which tops three of the four tables.
Homshaw says it is also about what you are not putting into the meals: “Some ready-meal producers are putting a lot of things in to produce flavour, and that’s basically down to the fact that the raw ingredients are so poor in the first place.”
Of course, the big driver when it comes to produce quality in ready meals is cost. With the retail market’s increasingly cut-throat pricing policies, there is not a great deal of room for manoeuvre in the market, says Gough.
“Ready meals is a tough market, everyone is looking to screw things down on price.” He says his company steers clear of the high-volume, low-price sector, concentrating firmly on the premium - and that is where the opportunity for fresh produce lies.
With the rising affluence of the UK consumer, more and more people are looking for premium products, says Gough: “People are upgrading. They’re still buying ready meals but they want restaurant-quality food - and if they’re spending more they want better quality, they want nicer products. As a result there’s a real drive on for quality product.”
Perhaps the most obvious example of the changing attitude to ready meal content has been Asda’s launch of its kid’s ready meal range, entitled Great Stuff.
The retailer says the range is aimed at giving children, between the ages of two to nine, a healthy balanced diet.
An Asda spokesman says: “The range has been developed using quality ingredients and avoids the unnecessary addition of additives. Where possible we have included a 5 a day portion within the complete meals and provided 5 a day tips on packs.”
While the initial launch has been described as a great success, the retailer is always looking for improvements.
The spokesman says: “We have a board of mums, who shadow our executive board, and they have been sampling the range.
“In the past, we’ve tended towards disguising the vegetables within the product, but the mums are now telling us not to, and calling for more vegetable content in the kids meals.”
Vicky Harper, marketing manager for meal solutions, says Asda is aiming to get more fresh produce into all its ready meals. “We’re expanding our healthy ready-meal range, Good For You, and we’ve been working with our key suppliers to replace frozen ingredients, such as frozen mushrooms, with fresh product.
“We’ve also got a lot of steamer products now, customers are telling us they want to have fresh veg.”
Harper said the retailer is also looking to rebrand its ready meals with the 5 A DAY logo where appropriate. “It’s difficult to get more than two portions per meal, but we’re getting the logo on them.”
There is no doubt the attitude towards ready meals and convenience foods is changing and that could spell an excellent opportunity for the fresh produce industry.
“The change in attitude is certainly starting to impact on our development, from a fruit and veg point of view,” says Perry, pointing to the fact that Cook’s forthcoming Christmas menu features a high proportion of fruit and vegetables, with one in particular containing a number of superfoods, such as blueberries.
“We’re primarily about taste and always will be. But the nutritional question is being considered alongside taste now, whereas five years ago, when we started it wasn’t such an issue and that does involve more vegetables.”
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