We were joined by Kantar on this week’s BFFF Business Conference with Carol Redman, Business Unit Director, giving us an update on current market data.

In the last 4-week period to 21.03.21 there has been a 6% decline in Total Grocery Sales. However, this needs to be placed into context as this time last year saw the massive spike in Retail Sales. If you compare to 2019 the market is up by 15.6%.

There are early signs that frequency of shopping trips is going up with basket spend coming down.

All retailers and channels are down year on year with the exception of Ocado and Online. Carol made the point that Online Sales are not yet annualising the period of very strong sales that will come later in 2021.

There is early evidence of consumers returning to stores that had lost footfall during the Pandemic, notably the discounters.

Data suggests that those over 55’s have started to return to physical stores, presumably driven by the confidence out of the Vaccination programme.

Frozen had a very positive year and saw not only positive value and volume growth but the category saw higher trip frequency whilst at a Total Grocery level trips were down year on year (52 week data).

We also saw frozen being used in more meal occasions up by +21% which is higher than both Ambient and Fresh Food.

Frozen is also seen as more relevant to young consumers and our category may benefit from the fact that 91% of respondents want to work from home more than they did pre-Pandemic. However, one area of concern is that 25% of the sales growth on frozen in 2020 came from feeding children at home.

The presentation from this year’s Frozen Food Business Conference will be made available to all attendees.  If you were not able to purchase a ticket, please contact Siobhan O’Callaghan.