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Downloads Ready meals can be a lifesaver. At the end of a hectic day, when nobody has the time or inclination to cook. Or when there’s some place to be and throwing a ready meal into the microwave is the only chance to eat. In our regular lives, the five-minute meal makes perfect sense. But in our new Zoom-calling, Netflix-watching, sourdough-baking lives? Well, less so. That sales of chilled ready meals fell 3.6% in 2020 [Nielsen 52 w/e 5 September 2020] – one of the few casualties of a year in which grocery retail sales climbed 8% – is testament to the fact that most of us had very little to do. And all the time in the world to dust off an Ottolenghi cookbook and get experimental in the kitchen. ....
By Ian Quinn2020-12-18T00:01:00+00:00 Source: Unsplash Boing! That’s the sound of soup bouncing back. Having been in the doldrums last year, the category is in value growth again. Ambient has been the big winner, of course, adding £35.5m after shoppers stockpiled tinned soups for the first lockdown. The sector grew by 9.4% in volume this year with market leader Heinz Classic the biggest success in absolute terms, now worth an extra £13.5m. Almost all the leading branded ranges enjoyed double-digit percentage growth, however – further boosted by a decline in promotions initially – but own-label soups outperformed brands. “The consumer reaction to the coronavirus crisis was a dash to the supermarket to stock up on store cupboard essentials,” points out Gordon Sloan, category & shopper development controller at Baxters. “The industry had to respond quickly to unprecedented consumer demand, reinforcing the incredible pace of our industry to adapt and ch ....