From Our Print Edition

Heavy frozen food buyers eat out more than average shoppers. More innovative own brand offerings — and better messaging — could help retailers win back some of those sales.

What’s new in the world of frozen food? Not much.

Frozen food helps negate restaurants’ “speed to table” advantage, but more culinarily adventurous consumers want more innovative offerings.

I walked the frozen aisles in a few stores this week and the only new thing I could find was some waffles in different shapes and flavors. A few store brands added new me-too versions of national brand SKUs, but the closest I came to an “exciting find” was one brand’s packaging boldly calling attention to air-frying as a preparation option.

The disheartening reality is that none of the stores did much to distinguish their offerings, with more of the same pizza, frozen desserts, novelties and ice cream forming brand billboards door after door after door. I didn’t measure, but it seems that frozen pizza is giving Tide a run for its money in filling shelf space in these stores.

AN OPENING FOR PRIVATE LABEL

Retailers have an opportunity at this moment in time to benefit from national brands’ lack of imagination by giving their customers access to unique, high-quality private label items at prices that are a clear value compared with the CPGs and restaurants.

The opportunity is clearly there, but let’s be honest: private brands are not exactly kicking down the doors to innovation either. I mean, how many more glazed chicken, meatloaf and spaghetti entrees do we really need?

Retailer-owned brands have an opportunity at this moment in time to benefit from national brands’ lack of imagination.

I get that folks preparing food at home primarily stick to the tried and true. There are plenty of frozen food offerings that fit that bill. That said, Americans are more culinarily adventurous than ever before.

The average person dines out at restaurants three times a month and has their food delivered 4.5 times, according to research released earlier this year by US Foods. Most (57%) prefer to get takeout or have food delivered, with 43% choosing to dine at a restaurant. The two biggest reasons people choose a restaurant are they don’t feel like cooking (74%) or find it more convenient (51%). Americans are so happy to avoid making meals that 54% are willing to wait a half-hour or longer for takeout or delivery orders.

Separate research by Circana nicely dovetails with US Foods’ findings. On the company’s Oct. 11 “Growth Insights” podcast, executive vp and practice leader Sally Lyons Wyatt said that “heavy consumers” of frozen entrees, who represent 60% of total entree sales, make 36% more trips to restaurants than the average grocery store customer.

But according to Lyons Wyatt, frozen foods easily win price comparisons with restaurants and hold their own on varieties of cuisines, quality and taste. They can also help negate the perceived “speed to table” advantage that many consumers associate with restaurants.

“You’re trying to get food for yourself or your family fast. So [frozen food] makes sense. When you start connecting all the dots — using one pan, using an air fryer, using some sort of appliance — that’s going to get it made fast,” she said.

A lot has changed in consumer behavior since the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Lyons Wyatt added. That includes how consumers define on-the-go, whether in the house or outside.

THERE’S MORE TO BE DONE

Frozen foods are fantastic for providing different cuisine options for consumers, but so much more could still be done. Now is the time to develop a game plan for new, exciting, healthy own brand items. Ones that are simple to make and add variety. (Please note that I’m not talking about adding different flavors for established items).

When was the last time you saw a frozen Mediterranean item? When did you come across a meal kit with 90% of the things you need to make a meal within it, like a fajita mix? I don’t see any national or store brand moving in this direction and it’s a missed opportunity to drive additional customer traffic, sales and profits.

It’s time to play up healthy attributes such as no MSG, low sodium, etc. And stores need to preempt restaurants with messaging that makes clear that it takes less time to pop a delicious frozen entree into a microwave or air fryer than it does to drive to a restaurant to pick up a meal or wait for a delivery to come. There’s a good reason that Domino’s dropped its 30-minute delivery guarantee 30 years ago.

OK, so let’s say we wake up tomorrow and frozen department shelves are filled with a wide assortment of tasty SKUs with little in the way of duplication. The aisle brims with items that can be made quickly and require little in the way of cleanup. Product packaging is literally stopping customers in the aisles. Will all this be enough?

We haven’t made it to frozen food heaven just yet.

Let’s take a deep look down the aisles, into each door and category and ask, ‘Is this the best we can do?’ Do we have a flow that creates adjacencies of complementary categories? Does
one door lead shoppers to open the one right next to it?

There’s a lot new that we could be doing in frozen foods. So let’s do it!

Bob Anderson is the retired vp/gmm at Walmart, where he worked for 17 years. He can be reached at bob. [email protected].