instore - May 2017 - 46

news

Packaging partnership
targets sustainability

Supermarkets stealing
restaurant dollars

One of the UK's retail giants, Tesco Plc, along with the global hospitality conglomerate, the Hilton Food Group, announced a partnership
with Linpac as part of a group commitment to eliminating packaging
waste in the food-supply chain. Using 95 percent recycled materials
from plastic water bottles derived from household waste, Linpac's
Rfresh Elite packaging has been adopted by Tesco for its meat and
poultry products. Linpac also supplied Elite packs to Hilton UK and
Ireland in 2016.

According to The NPD Group, retail foodservice departments generated 2.4 billion visits and $10 billion in sales in 2016 thanks to the
promotion of restaurant-quality freshly prepared foods. Since 2008, in
fact, these visits have increased by nearly 30 percent.

Unlike some other sustainable plastic material on the market, the Elite
packaging utilizes a sealant between the tray and top film that facilitates easier post-consumer recycling, extending the life and uses for
the material in the future. The sealant also reduces the weight of the
packages by up to 5 percent compared to traditional packaging formats.
Tesco's adoption of Rfresh Elite products has created an end-market
use for over 1,300 tons of plastic post-consumer waste.
According to Mark Caul, Ph.D., technical manager for packaging at
Tesco, the recycling attributes of the packaging demonstrates a longterm commitment to preserving the environment by the company and
has the potential to have an impact on a more global scale.
"These trays represent a step change for the packaging industry by
being much lighter, with the added bonus of making recycling easier
for local authorities," he said. "This is a landmark innovation and a
clear demonstration of our commitment to reducing our impact on the
environment we live in."

Frozen foods flat again
Looking for residual good news about fresh prepared foods? According
to Packaged Facts, overall sales of frozen foods in the United States are
flat, reflecting in part a growing consumer preference for fresh foods.
Among packaged food products, frozen foods are generally more
affordable and convenient over shelf-stable and refrigerated/fresh
counterparts. Even so, frozen foods lost ground to these alternatives on
all counts from 2014 to 2016.
Packaged Facts' new report Frozen Foods in the US projects that sales
of frozen foods from 2016-2021 will experience a negative compound
annual growth rate, going from around $22 billion to $21 billion for the
four key frozen food categories: Frozen Dinners/Entrees, Frozen Pizzas,
Frozen Side Dishes, and Frozen Appetizers/Snacks.
46 * MAY 2017 * instore

A USA Today report on the NPD findings confirms that the trend is
driven by Millennials and pushes the number of Americans who buy
freshly prepared foods from grocery stores to more than 40 percent.
It helps that the experience is quicker than most restaurant visits and
that it's typically cheaper as well. NPD says the average meal at a supermarket costs $4.22, while a fast-casual restaurant meal averages $7.96.
That's a 53 percent difference.
"The market has become very blurred," NPD restaurant analyst Bonnie
Riggs told USA Today. "The competition was just the restaurant
down the street, but it also now places that offer prepared meals that
compete directly with restaurants."

Study: More shoppers
staying on the perimeter
According to the latest VideoMining Grocery Shopper Impact
MegaStudy, more shoppers are limiting themselves to the perimeter of
the grocery store. The study shows what 20 percent of shoppers only
shop in the perimeter, while that number was just 12 percent in 2012.
"With Decision Analytics, we now have the ability to determine
whether a decision is made pre-shelf or at-shelf," says Richard Hirata,
senior vice-president of shopper science for VideoMining. "This
has huge implications for how marketing dollars are allocated. For
example, if category decisions are primarily made pre-shelf, you
wouldn't want to dump all of your budget into at-shelf initiatives."
Also included in the study was the revelation that men are shopping
at supermarkets nearly as much as women now. Contrary to popular
opinion, women now account for just 51 percent of grocery shoppers,
narrowing the gender gap in this key CPG channel. However, women
still buy more items and spend more - on average $2.73 per trip more
than men.
Since 2011, VideoMining has been providing CPG retailers and manufacturers key insights on shoppers using real-world behavioral data
from millions of grocery shoppers.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of instore - May 2017