With the summer weather enticing people outside, many tend to opt for lighter meals which can be eaten on the go or with little preparation or fuss. As such, varied salads and traditional summer fruits are ideal and all retailers report dramatic increases across these lines.
Consumers are increasingly attracted by colourful and adventurous-looking items, which deliver on taste and are simple to use. However, the vagaries of the British summertime make forecasting demand for fresh produce nigh-on impossible, so buyers have to be flexible to sudden changes in weather.
As well as observing a general surge across the salad category, Sainsbury’s has recorded individual champions, according to salad buyer, Clancy McMahon. “Increase in demand in the summer is seen across all salad lines. We can be doing up to approximately 66 per cent more volume in the summer compared to the winter,” she claims. “One of our most reactive lines to hot weather is radish - which seems to be triggered with temperatures over the 24°C, but all leafy items are very weather-responsive and the motivation to barbecue will normally increase volumes by 35 per cent over the hot period.”
Bagged salads are becoming increasingly popular and the category has been steadily expanding to meet demand for existing product and stimulate demand for increasingly diverse assortments. According to Somerfield’s fresh produce buyer, Dominic Edwards, bagged salads are key to the chain’s fresh food offer and maintaining consistent supplies of all lines is a top priority. “To meet anticipated demand, central overlays are applied on salad lines and orders will be increased in volume accordingly,” he says. “This is monitored alongside the weather forecast to ensure that we have plenty of stock on shelves when demand is at its highest.”
Somerfield will be rolling out a new rocket salad and sweet green salad for this season. Sainsbury’s is similarly extending the category with two new ‘Taste the Difference’ selections, pea leaf and baby mint salad and aromatic baby basil salad.
Thanks to the increasing coverage of healthy foods, consumers are becoming more bold in their preferences for salads, according to Philippa Swattridge, marketing manager at specialist food company, Aconbury Sprouts.
Aconbury produces fresh organic sprouts, wheatgrass and salad greens for various retailers, as well as foodservice and catering outlets.
Swattridge says natural health nutritionists and ‘living foods’ experts have long since labelled sprouts as ‘superfoods’, since they are rich in protein and contain a vast array of vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Being most nutritious in their raw form, they require little preparation which makes them ideal for exotic summer salads and barbecue accompaniments, and with a shelf-life of 14 days, they last longer than the average fresh product.
The lighter sprouted seeds in Aconbury’s range include Alfafa, broccoli, radish sprouts and more recently, a spicy pink Radish sprout called Sango. Its sprouted pulses includes sunflower sprouts and mung beans, aduki beans, lentils and chickpea sprouts in separate lines or as a mixed selection. Snow pea shoots have also been introduced, and are available either grown in trays on organic compost or on a non-soil base.
While speciality tomatoes are gaining recognition year-on-year, McMahon says it is interestingly the more traditional varieties that see the biggest uplifts in summer. Loose and Flavouripe tomatoes can rise by 14 per cent, beef by 25 per cent, cherry tomatoes by 28 per cent and plum by 30 per cent, which has been particularly noticeable this year, she says. “Tomatoes are such a versatile product but the onset of salad days definitely lifts sales. I’m sure this is because loose and cherry are still seen as the tomato to eat in salads. The rise in beef tomatoes, I’m sure, is to do with barbecues - they are fantastic to slice and have with beef burgers and great for sandwiches, to take to work etc.”
Sainsbury’s has also increased its offer of cherry tomatoes due to the recognised versatility of the smaller fruit. “As cherry tomatoes are seen as the more convenient tomato, we have increased this range substantially from one traditional cherry tomato line to four, including supersweet cherry tomatoes, Sungold orange cherry tomatoes and Vittoria cherry tomatoes on the vine,” says McMahon. “Of course the vine products continue to be popular and more people are taking to roasting the tomatoes on barbecues.”
With such a large-scale promotional campaign, few will have been able to miss the emphasis Sainsbury’s has been bestowing on fresh produce of late, British products in particular. The lively television adverts and attractive chalk-drawn lettering branded across 10 different items adorning point of sale material, magazines, billboards, and underground passage ways across the country, have already captured mass attention. According to the supermarket’s latest research, overall sales of Jersey potatoes are up 27 per cent on last year, while asparagus is up by 93 per cent on a weekly average, with individual dates recording increases of as much as 290 per cent. And with the campaign set to continue until August 31, Sainsbury’s is expecting like-for-like sales to rise across all the featured lines.
The chain is also taking the opportunity to introduce some innovative products, for the time-poor consumer. These include Mediterranean vegetables for roasting and small vegetable kebabs, giant vegetable skewers with a Cajun coating and sweetcorn cobettes, with a basil butter glaze, for barbecues.
Concerned that corn-on-the-cob might be swept aside in the hunt for less awkward meal options, Greyfriars UK has launched a disposable corn cob eating utensil, ‘The Cob Nob’, to encourage shoppers to view corn on the cob as a healthy and convenient complete meal solution in the run up to the peak selling period.
The disposable products will be attached to packs of Greyfriars corn and will be available exclusively through Morrisons. “We found that concerns over messy eating and the thought of searching the cutlery drawer for the correct utensil were putting a lot of people off buying sweet corn,” says Greyfriars managing director, John Smith. “Now ‘the Cob Nob’ provides a convenient meal solution and we are confident that corn on the cob will become more popular with people looking to add variety to their five daily portions of fruit and vegetables.” The Cob Nob has an off-centre pin which prevents rotational slipping when the corn is eaten, and the pack also contains simple cooking instructions to make the product even more “user-friendly”, says Smith. Greyfriars’ is meanwhile undertaking Morrisons-dedicated trials to assess the viability of growing sweetcorn close to its centre of operations in North Yorkshire, which, if successful, will be added to its range for the major retailers.
Fresh fruit is increasingly popular for summer puddings and snacks, with a wide array of recipes and suggestions filtering through to the consumer, according to the multiples. Tesco has reported a dramatic rise in strawberry sales around the Wimbledon tournament season. At the same time other berries are continuing to see steep inclines, according to a spokeswoman for the chain. “One fruit that is doing noticeably well this year is the blueberry,” she says. “Its sales have jumped so much it is now Britain’s fastest growing fruit. Since September, sales have risen by 185 per cent. We think the huge boom is down to a lot of recent publicity from dieticians, pointing out that not only do blueberries taste great and different, they also help protect against cancer and heart disease.”
Sainsbury’s is also hoping to appeal to those wanting a healthy snack, with its new fruit lines, including a mix of strawberries and blueberries, strawberries and low fat yoghurt, a summer fruit medley with nectarine pack and a bag of pink lady apple pieces.
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