Where some retailers are adapting their fruit and vegetables ranges in a bid to reap maximum rewards from evolving dietary fads, others, such as Iceland UK, are instead making a determined push towards higher-end and more sophisticated foods. According to Gama, this is particularly the case in categories such as ice cream & desserts, ready meals & prepared foods and meat, fish & poultry, where premium private label has represented 2.3%, 2.5% and 2.7% of all NPD recorded on Gama Compass™ since 2014, comparing favorably with the own brand foods as a whole.
“On this emerging ‘premium’ scene – and with an eye on Europe in particular – leading frozen food specialists such as UK-based Iceland and France-based Picard are emerging as significant players, demonstrating efforts by such retailers to cast off frozen food’s sometimes downmarket image,” says Gama.
“Launching his firm’s new Luxury brand in September of last year, for instance, Iceland chief executive Malcolm Walker described his mission to tackle “the huge snobbery about frozen food being low quality”. In a similar bid to cast its product lines in a more sophisticated light, around the same time Iceland also unveiled a partnership with pizza restaurant chain Pizza Express, stocking a range of Pizza Express branded frozen pizzas, pasta meals, salad dressings and ice cream in a bid to convey a sense of ‘restaurant quality’.”
