It only seems to take a few days of hot, dry weather to get the barbecues smoking, so not surprisingly they are a major target for the multiple retailers, making the point that the ingredients are far more than just a few overdone sausages and hamburgers.

Salads and vegetables of all sorts are getting a boost in the process, with Tesco providing not just sweetcorn cobettes, at £2.99 for 332g, but cobs with the sticks already put in the ends for easy handling, as well as with a new twist of lime and chilli butter.

Prepared veg is also prominent at Marks & Spencer, where its new Eat Well Kitchen range blends carrots, bean sprouts and edamame soya beans with noodles and sweet chilli sauce, at £2.99 for 360g. The message on the pack is “three of your 5 A DAY”.

In parallel, the stir-fry range has also widened at Tesco with three new packs featuring Tenderstem broccoli prominently. All priced at £1.50, there is a stand-alone 270g pack and another of 290g, which incorporates those increasingly popular edamame beans, as well as ginger. The other is a Thai-style mix.

There is now plenty of evidence to show that unusual colours are also eye-catchers. The public has already had a taste of purple carrots and now the trend has spread to include radish, alongside red and white French Breakfast and the traditional Red Globe types. Tesco has an exclusive arrangement under its Nurture band and has priced the purple product at 65p for 150g.

But it is on the tomato front that choice appears to be never ending. Sticking with the colour concept, M&S’s exclusive, trademarked Kumato Round, grown in Lancashire by Andy Roe, is now beginning to appear, priced at £2.49 for 450g.

The fruit ripens from green to shiny brown with what is described as a “striking internal colour” - a real customer temptation to buy one just to see what is inside. And to highlight that the product is something special, the pack is branded “our latest discovery”.

At the other end of the scale, Sainsbury’s is offering Tomberries, which are so small that one customer I spoke to thought they were redcurrants. The variety is grown in the Netherlands by Duyvestijn, at £1.49 for 125g.

And amid all the hype, perhaps the most eye-catching was French vine fruit in a simple, virtually unlabelled pack offered as part of Tesco’s Growers’ Choice range. As my photo shows, the presentation could not be more minimalist, but the cardboard outer clearly showed that the fruit was sourced from Saveol. Also, I imagine that attaching tomato recipes featured in its TV ads as an integral part of the display carton, rather than relying on shelf barkers or those fiddly shelf dispensers, is a further innovation.

And while most fruit fixtures are now almost disappearing under the weight of summer strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and cherries, there was time to spare a glance at top fruit. Under its premium Taste the Difference label, Sainsbury’s has an exclusive arrangement selling one of the latest New Zealand varieties called Eve, grown by Heartland and priced at £1.99 for four.

Topics