When William Cowper wrote more than 200 years ago that "variety is the spice of life" he probably wasn't talking about the market for wet cooking sauces. However, having shrugged off the stigma from the early bland and uninteresting days, the ethnic cooking sauces market (including Italian) has grown into a hotbed of innovation, with new flavours, cooking experiences and ethnicities hitting the shelves.
People are becoming more confident about cooking ethnic food, fuelled by celebrity chefs. Wet cooking sauces dominate, but consumers are increasingly happy to use pastes, curry powders, marinades, pouring and dipping sauces to create flavours. Retailers are realising the importance of making it easier to shop the ethnic sauces aisle and discover products.
While Italian sauces dominate the ambient market, followed by Indian, Chinese and Mexican, a quick trip down the ethnic aisle will reveal a host of sauces, marinades and accompaniments from around the world: the Caribbean, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland, Morocco, Goa, Greece, Japan, Korea, Nepal and Malaysia, to name but a few.
"Consumer appetite for more exotic cuisines remains a significant trend," says Suzanne McFarlin, spokesperson for Uncle Ben's. "Consumers have been given more access to tasty, healthy and easy-to-prepare world cuisines."
Worth £573m and growing 6.3% [IRI July 07] the wet cooking sauce market continues to perform. A significant change on last year is the growth in non-Italian (Oriental, Indian, Mexican and Traditional).
A key movement in the convenience market is consumer demand for tasty, healthy recipes and simple, honest labelling. Consumers are increasingly health conscious and label-literate. Therefore it's not about health per se, but reassurance that the products they are eating fit with their lifestyles. "It's not a sector that the health trend has vastly affected, because people's expectations are different: they want flavour in something that is an infrequent purchase," says James Bennett, head of marketing, Discovery Foods. "But," he adds, "naturalness and authenticity are still relevant, as is provenance. They understand that a product may be manufactured locally but inspired by something authentic."
Consumers are looking for convenient yet tasty meal solutions. This is reflected in significantly decreased cook times - more than half of all meals are prepared in under 30 minutes (FFP - Annual Summer/Autumn 2004 In Home Consumption). "There are three things driving the market: quick, easy and no mess," says Ben Johnson, marketing director for The Grocery Company, which markets the Nando's and Wagamama range of sauces and marinades.
Italian is by far the biggest player in wet cooking sauces, dominated by big brands such as Dolmio and Ragù, with competition from smaller players such as Sacla', which very much trades on its 'authentic' credentials. However, this desire for authenticity or provenance, is driving much of the activity across the whole of the Italian sector.
Dolmio, for example, is keeping up with consumer demand and has achieved incremental growth through product innovation and significant investment in the sauces category over the past 12 months, particularly with its entry into the premium pasta sauce market, with the launch of Tastes of Italy - a range of premium pourover sauces inspired by four regions of Italy and backed by a £2.25m investment. "The range is about delivering the quality our consumers have learnt to expect, then stepping it up a gear through the use of premium ingredients," says Suzanne McFarlin.
Sacla', too, has been hitting the innovation trail, adding four premium whole cherry tomato sauces to its range of contemporary Italian foods. Clare Blampied, MD of Sacla' UK, believes the new sauces will appeal equally to convenience consumers seeking a premium sauce good enough to serve as it is and those looking for a base to use in their cooking.
The timing couldn't be better, with the total premium pourover market worth £63.5m and continuing to show steady growth at 11.4% [ACNielsen April 07].
While Italian still leads the way, the Indian and Chinese markets continue to vie for second spot in the sauces market. The market for Chinese food in 2005 was estimated to be worth £632m, an increase of 20% in the past five years [Mintel]. Brands like Amoy and Blue Dragon that trade on traditional recipes are helping drive that growth. Amoy has seen a 23.7% increase in volume sales and a 19.8% rise in value sales [IRI Nov 06]. Meanwhile, these established players have been joined the Wagamama range, popularised in the restaurants of the same name and marketed by The Grocery Company. Positioned at the premium end of the market, the range has provided retailers with the opportunity to get consumers to trade up. "Since the launch last year, the range has been selling well," says Ben Johnson. "The Wagamama Spicy Chilli Men stir-fry sauce, a bestselling restaurant dish, has also proved a favourite with retail consumers, showing how a restaurant product can successfully translate into the retail marketplace."
Another brand positioning itself in premium is Tanfield with its new Look What We Found! range of chef-created pourover sauces. Trading heavily on their provenance, they aim to combine the terms "gourmet" and "ambient".
Meanwhile, Indian sauces are still proving popular with UK consumers, with almost 50% of the UK population eating Indian food at least once a month. The total ambient Indian category is worth £151.6m, up 4.2% year-on-year, with sauces in glass accounting for 48% of the category. Within cooking sauces generally, Patak's is showing the highest year-on-year growth, up 23.5% [ACNielsen Jan 07]. "Consumers see Patak's as authentic, as well as delicious and consistently high in quality," says Jonathan Bye, Patak's general manager foods & breads and group director - commercial. The brand has high hopes for its range of regional sauces. It's also launched a raft of new products in recent months to further boost the brand's credentials. n
CATEGORY INSIGHT: Table sauces and marinades
It's no longer just about a bottle of ketchup for the average consumer - the world's their oyster
Piquant is the best word to describe the raft of new products in recent years to hit the 'thin' or table sauces market. Once dominated by ketchups and brown sauce, the market has seen an explosion of world flavours as consumers up the ante when it comes to wanting new flavours and taste experiences.
The Caribbean is one sector to benefit from consumers' growing desire to experiment. In the emerging cuisines market, Caribbean is the second-biggest growth area, accounting for more than 20% and is now receiving wide attention from retailers and consumers. "Chinese, Indian and Thai flavours are very much the norm now and while Caribbean flavours are enjoying growth, there is still an air of mystery," says Roddy Edwards, chairman of Walkerswood. "We aim to demystify Caribbean cuisine, as many consumers are unsure of how to prepare these dishes from scratch."
Walkerswood's Escoveitch Pickle Sauce is made from a traditional Jamaican recipe that adds a zing to chicken and fish dishes and is also used as a salad dressing. The company also has a range of jerk and barbecue sauces and marinades that are designed as entry products for those looking to try Caribbean for the first time.
And, while summer may have been a washout this year, the Nando's brand has been going from strength to strength, growing at 42.5% year-on-year, 2.5 times faster then the marinade market. Nando's is the leading marinade brand with 23.4% share of the market and its Hot Peri-Peri marinade is the bestselling variant in the market with over 10% market share. "Nando's marinades have been flying off the shelves over the past 12 months, partly due to the great summer we had last year but also as a result of more and more consumers enjoying marinades all year round. In fact, we're seeing a 60/40 spilt in terms of summer versus winter usage of marinades, so while summer still is a key period, winter is also becoming as important," says Ben Johnson, marketing director for The Grocery Company.
Nando's has also nearly doubled its growth in the thin sauces market, with sales up 43.6%.
WHAT THE suppliers ARE SAYING
Retailers are devoting quite a lot of space to the oil sector, because its growth has been fairly dynamic, and they all have speciality sectors in store to a greater or lesser degree. However, there is an opportunity to make the fixture a bit simpler and easier for consumers to shop. There is a lot of choice in the sector, which may be OK if it's a choice between brand and own label, but where it comes to choosing between different countries or regional versus country-specific, it gets a lot harder. The opportunity is to get people to use a product in everyday cooking, use one to drizzle, and have a speciality product on the table: you need to encourage people to use products in different ways.
Simon Bell,
retail director, Merchant Gourmet
WHAT THE suppliers ARE SAYING
Merchandising is currently under the big banner of 'Mexican'. Some of it is core Mexican, like tacos and fajitas, but the term is a catch-all for everything else, including meal kits - whether they are Mexican or not. We have put a category vision to the retailers that it could be merchandised under 'Mexican and the New World' because we see that you could logically extend Mexican into being anything new in world foods. They buy into it in principle, but in practice they are not going to change the header cards. There is some evidence of broadening the category in-store already however, adding greater clarity to the Mexican fixture.
James Bennett,
head of marketing, Discovery Foods
CATEGORY INSIGHT:?Oils
Olive oils have earned their position as a mainstream category, accounting for nearly half of total oils
Olive oils now account for nearly half of the total oils sector. Most consumers are now aware of the health benefits and, due to the aspirational values that olive oil represents, more consumers are buying into it. The total oils market was worth £214m [TNS, April 07], with the biggest share taken by extra virgin olive oil at £71.3m and standard olive oil at £27m. The rest of the market is made up of other 'edible' oils - like nut oils, flavoured oils and speciality - and cooking oils like vegetable and sunflower. While the overall growth is good news, brands should not become complacent as statistics show the own label category has grown in value by over 20%, while brands are growing at a slower rate of 8% [ACNielsen, May 07].
Consumers now want to know exactly where their food comes from, putting pressure on both retailers and producers to supply products packaged at source to prove their authenticity. According to Suzanne Heffernan, retail marketing manager from oil producer AarhusKarlshamn UK, it is important to push the boundaries of consumer expectations. "It's about bringing added value to the consumer in terms of quality and ingredients. Our infused oils do not have a synthetic flavour added to them but are made by infusing the oil with the actual fresh ingredient, chilli for chilli oil, lemon for lemon oil. Oil needs to add value and interest to the consumer in taste and appearance."
Increased interest in a variety of alternative and multicultural cuisine, meanwhile, has driven sales of speciality oils such as infused and bread dipping oils, which have risen in volume by 9.3%. Although the established, continually growing olive oil market corners more than half the overall market value, grapeseed, pumpkin seed and avocado oils are also reaping the benefits.
Simon Bell, retail director of Merchant Gourmet says the market has changed enormously in the past 10 years. "Much of the growth around nut oils is from a health perspective as people look for things that are lower in saturated fats and have added health properties," he says. "They are also looking at the same time to eat a healthier diet and make salads more interesting and use different dressings to add variety."
Has the number of customer complaints about the price of goods increased recently?
