Dec 1st, 2020
3 mins
The Food Service market faces an uncertain festive trading period, combined with the new tier structures which seem to impact Hospitality disproportionality the future looks uncertain.
However, the picture in retail is somewhat different. Discussions with several major retailers shows that sales of frozen seasonal products have started very strongly and earlier than normal. Planning for sales this Christmas was always going to be a very complex process as historical trading patterns where basically redundant due to the pandemic. Nearly every metric normally used to forecast demand has changed. As one category director told me “we have four plans and we know each one is wrong, we are just trying to use the one that is least wrong”. A quick survey across the main retail groups showed they had increased volumes across all frozen seasonal lines where they could. Frozen Turkey volumes were mostly increased by double digit percentages, but even here many of those we contacted thought stocks could sold out long before Christmas. On a call this week one of the Big four retailers advised that frozen turkeys sales are up 200% year on year, and Cook have now emailed customers advising that despite their kitchens producing record numbers of Christmas Dinners, Turkey and all the trimings, they have sold out of those for two and eight people.
