Through a special arrangement, presented here for section of a recent article, from Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer magazine.
Retailers are looking to differentiate by adding more fresh meal items, and different sized items, in meals, snacks and desserts. The goal is to take business away from restaurants, but all this has had an impact on center store volume, including frozen and dairy.
"Let's say the consumer picks up a deli pizza and not a frozen pizza. Who wins?" asks Todd Hale, SVP of consumer and retail insight at the Nielsen Company. "And what about margins in the perimeter, with its high labor costs and shrink? All this needs to be considered. Why not take some frozen desserts and put them in the fresh-prepared meals section? This gives consumers more choices. Coca-Cola has done something similar to this, with carbonated displays around prepared meal areas."
At the same time, prepared foods' success is causing retailers to rethink how they merchandise other departments to provide a more broad-based solution for shoppers.
"One retailer moved everything related to a picnic right up close to the meat department — paper plates, napkins, charcoal, lighter fluid and so on. Shoppers could buy everything for the entire picnic occasion all in one area," said Mr. Hale. "Another group of retailers bundled refrigerated meal items all together in one location. Without even a price promotion, the stores saw strong sales increases from those displays because they delivered on making a complete meal, rather than forcing the shopper to walk the whole store."