How to capitalise on the premiumisation of pasta sauces
Pasta. The food of love. And according to a report in The Grocer in November 2020, pasta consumption is through the roof in the UK following successive lockdowns during the pandemic. It seems we Brits just can’t put down the penne.
Sales in the first part of 2020 grew primarily due to nervous consumers stockpiling goods like pasta and canned goods. But the trend of rocketing sales continued throughout the year as shoppers sought out their pasta fix. Even the consumption of traditional pasta sauces - the ambient or chilled varieties that we’re all familiar with - is keeping pace with the increased demand for the pasta they’re coating, with sales up 12.5% to £363.6m [Kantar 52 w/e 6 September 2020]. This is a reversal of the slump in sales that we’ve seen in recent years. It seems that the latest trends towards more enticing sauces to cater to sophisticated consumer tastes are attracting today’s foodies who are used to exotic, indulgent pasta sauces when they eat out and want to bring these flavours into the home.
Persistent premiumisation
It’s clear that the premiumisation trend isn’t going anywhere, particularly as consumers continue to ‘eat in’ due to restrictions globally. It’s vital for manufacturers to continue to create more “inventive and premium offers” to attract millenials, as well as more discerning existing customers. Easier said than done you might think. But there is a way.
Steam Infusion technology can help you to develop products with a unique selling point and provide flexibility to your manufacturing process so you can produce short runs of each batch to diversify your product range, with reduced downtime. Using either a standalone Steam Infusion Vaction Pump or in conjunction with the APRIL Robotics cooking cell, the combination of the speed of processing with the unique advantage of the elimination of burn-on allows batches of pasta sauce to be cooked in less than 15 minutes, with only a simple clean-down before preparing the next run.
The quick cooking time also retains the colour and flavour profile of your ingredients so your products can stand out on the shelf, delighting customers with indulgent tastes in the home. With Steam Infusion, you can maintain particulate integrity, especially when you’re adding in premium ingredients such as n’duja. Steam Infusion helps to deliver that great mouthfeel that consumers love.
And what’s more, this trend towards premiumisation inevitably includes a price increase, which can help to boost your bottom line, as well as increasing demand.
Want to test out a new product? Our development chef can run trials with your recipes and offer advice on how to get the best results at our test centre at the University of Lincoln’s National Centre for Food Manufacturing (NCFM) in the UK.