The innovative offer for frozen food follows the global trends: a more natural and healthier offer, but which doesn’t affect the consumer’s pleasure during the meal. We are far from the years 2006-2008 where the functionality of a product beneficial to health was provided medically (with artificially enriched or light products), paying little regard to the final pleasure of the consumer.
By Xavier Pilloy, XTC World Innovation
Global innovations in this field are full of products which rely on three main factors: naturalness, health and benefits for well-being. Several levers of innovations can be used to convey this naturalness, in particular in the offer for snacks and frozen ready-meals.
Targeting the flexitarians
2016 marks the arrival of a much more vegetarian offer for frozen products, but with the difference that this new vegetarian offer is not directed to the strictly vegetarian consumers but to the flexitarians. Flexitarians are consumers who have voluntarily reduced their meat consumption and especially the consumption of products made of animal protein, replacing them with plant products. It is worth noting that the flexitarians continues to eat meat, they are not strictly vegetarian as required by the historical definition.
Moreover, flexitarian consumers prefer to eat less meat, but of better quality. There is a triple motivation for the birth of this new consumer segment: to eat healthy, to buy less expensive products (the prices of meat-based products have constantly increased in the last few years) and to eat more ecologically. The agri-food manufacturers adapt themselves and offer vegetarian snacks, instead of sophisticated recipes, which copy the marketing codes of the standard products. For example, Field Roast in the United States proposes a substitute to roast meat, made of tomato and cereals, with a side dish made of chanterelle mushrooms, cranberries and wild rice, all topped with pineapple and mustard sauce. Daiya Foods in Canada combines pleasure and health with a vegan pizza with mushrooms and roasted garlic. Other producers adapt vegetables in order to make them more palatable: Vork & Mes in the Netherlands have launched the breaded beetroot mouthfuls, to be prepared in the fryer. In each of these examples, the important thing is not to affect pleasure, but to actually increase it.
Vegetarian trend is growing
The exoticism is an important source of inspiration for companies in search of vegetarian recipes. Many Indian or Asians recipes are vegetarian and offer sophisticated and new flavors. For example, the Kashmiri Dum Aloo (potatoes cooked in a tomato sauce with cashew nuts), the Chana Masala (chick peas cooked in a tomato sauce spiced with onions) or the Subz Miloni Hariyali (a mixture of vegetables cooked in spinach sauce) which belong to the Indian gastronomic heritage. In the United Kingdom, Iceland Foods rethinks the couscous recipe and proposes a 100% vegetarian alternative. The efforts made by frozen food producers to provide such alternatives are explained by the fact that the consumers feel more confident when they eat a vegetarian cooked dish. Unlike a meal eaten with family or shared with friends, the shopper is alone in taking the risk to try a new recipe, and, in particular, a vegetarian one. A common practice in recent times, introduced by producers of single-meal vegetarian frozen food is testing such recipes on individual formats, which could subsequently become references for the whole family if they are successful.
Why are consumers willing to pay more for free-from goods?
The gluten free continues its progression into the innovative offer for frozen products. In all consumer expectations (individual consumption, family consumption, home-cooking etc.), new gluten free references enrich the ranges of existing products. Beyond the medical nature of such innovation, the gluten free is supported by a consumer searching for a healthier diet, and ready to pay the extra cost that this implies. It should be noted that the proposed gluten free innovations strive to keep intact the pleasure of the consumer. A similar dynamic is noticed in the case of the lactose free products. Besides the persons with lactose intolerance, many consumers reduce or stop their consumption of products containing lactose for health and well-being reasons. Thus, new references are emerging to inventive recipes because they have reformulated ranges and transformed them into gluten and lactose free recipes, like Ikea which launches its Tarta Chokladkrokant, an almond pie with milk chocolate and butter cream toffee.
Sharing is caring…and cheaper
Sharing is brought into the limelight by more practical frozen products, meant to be eaten in group. Sharing is a trend of substance which structures the agri-food innovative offer. Given the economic difficulties faced by Europe, the purchasing power of the consumer is all the more valued. People make less frequent impulse purchases and each expenditure must have a meaning. Therefore, buying for someone else and sharing it with them is a socially stronger action. Also, consumers’ preference for home eating resulted in a general decline in restaurant eating. This return to home is justified by economic reasons, but it also appears as a response to the mistrust of European consumers in the agri-food industry in general. An erosion of said trust in food producers and their products is in favor of the home-cooking trend, where the consumer knows what he/she cooks.
Key trend: bite-sized products
This return to home promotes a particular eating time: the dinner aperitif. The structure of the traditional meal (appetizer + main course + dessert) is considered too heavy by the consumers. One main course for several people is akin to a risky choice. What if one of the guests is vegetarian? Or if he eats gluten free food? The advantage of the dinner aperitif is that everyone can create their meals according to their desires of the moment, with the help of small portions and of individually adjustable bite-sized products. Many producers have launched innovations to meet the expectations specific to this eating behavior. Gluten free mini-pizzas, bite-sized gluten free sweet potatoes, or breaded cheeses with a gluten free batter made of rice flour are all innovations that are meant to accommodate the consumer during the sharing moments.
