Focus On Ready Meals & Soups: 9 January

Focus On Ready Meals & Soups by Megan Tatum

Download the synopsis here

Publishing: 9 January 2021

Copy deadline: 16 December

Submissions deadline: 14 December

The Story

Staying home is the new going out. Ambient ready meals and soups have delivered significant growth, thanks to shoppers’ rediscovered instinct to stock their cupboards however chilled ready meals have fallen into decline while frozen ready meals’ growth has lagged behind the rest of grocery. Is this the ‘new normal’ for ready meals & soups? How are suppliers and retailers preparing for 2021?

Key Themes

Shopper priorities: Ready meals and soups have established themselves as convenient, quick meal options. But since Covid our lives have been turned upside down, is convenience still as important to consumers as it was prepandemic or have other factors (health, indulgence, price, etc) become more important? How can players adapt?

Ambient versus frozen and fresh: This feature will explore the factors that have driven the wildly different performances of fresh, frozen and ambient ready meals and soups over the past year. Is this the ‘new normal’ or will things soon return to how they were?

NPD: What impact has all the turmoil of the past year had on innovation in soups and ready meals? With most people working from home (or not at all) has NPD been put on hold? What’s in store for the coming year?

Kantar data: Using Kantar commentary, we explain the reasons behind the rise and fall of the ready meals & soups sub-categories

4 x innovations: We will profile four new products or ranges that have ideally not appeared in The Grocer before. We need launch date, rsp, and a hi-res picture of each.