focus on... home baking
42 | The Grocer | 20 July 2019 Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk
● The value of the home
baking market has slipped
1.7% to £694.8m. Shoppers
buying less o en is the key
driver of decline.
● Total grocery prices may
have risen 1.1% this year,
but average prices within
home baking remain at.
● That’s down to steady
base prices and a 2.3%
increase in the level of
promotions, which mostly
took the form of price cuts.
● Share between brands
and own label remains
stable, with the latter
holding 56% of spend.
● However, own label sales
have declined at a faster
rate than brands , with
increased promotional
activity driving value out of
own label sectors.
● Brands have been more
active in NPD compared
with own label over the
past year, launching 23 new
ranges (compared with
seven launched by retailers
over the same period).However, own label NPD
has outperformed its
branded counterpart,
bringing in £9.2m versus
£1.6m for brands.
● Tertiary brands The
Grower’s Harvest and
Stockwell & Co, which
launched in Tesco last May,
have contributed £8m to
the category.
Amber Trott,
KantarFalling at: home baking value sales
Kantar’s Worldpanel FMCG service monitors consumer behaviour across Great Britain. Its primary panel tracks
take-home purchases of 30,000 demographically representative households. Data on consumption habits,
nutrition and out of home sales is collected through subsidiary panels. Visit kantarworldpanel.com for details.Brands vs own label
Source: Kantar 52 w/e 24 March 2019 For the full data, visit thegrocer.co.ukBranded
.m
(▼ 1.4%)Own label
.m
(▼ 1.9%)Other baking
ingredients
. m
(▲ 2.3%)Baking fruits
. m
(▼ 5.1%)Flour
. m
(▼ 2%)Cake coverings
m
(▼ 11.2%)Sugar
.m
(▼ 1.6%)Snacking fruit
& nuts
. m
(▼ 1.4%)the moment they approach the aisle. “The
home baking xture is messy,” she says. “We
know from our consumer research that shop-
pers nd the baking aisle underwhelming
and hard to navigate, and that there’s a really
high ratio of people who browse the xture
but walk away with nothing.”
Touchais suggests simpli cation as one
way to tackle the problem. “At the moment,
there are way too many individual products
on shelf, which is leading to confusion.”
But simpli cation may be easier said than
done, given the sheer amount of innovation
around. And Premier Foods can take credit for
two of the major launches. The rst came in
the form of Cadbury cake mixes, which rolled
out into Asda in September and expanded
to include ready-to-use icings in June. “The
range has helped chocolate cake mixes to
grow by nearly 30% since the launch,” says
Touchais. “It’s proving to be really appealing
to Asda’s core family and younger shoppers.”
The next launch was under the Mr Kipling
brand, which made its home baking debut
in June with a three-strong range of cake
mixes and two icings (p43). “These are really
famous, loved and trusted brands that are
known for providing iconic avours,” says
Touchais. “We believe there’s a huge opportu-
nity to use those credentials to drum up some
excitement into the home baking category.”
Premier Foods isn’t the only one at it.
Overall, Kantar counts 30 new home baking
ranges over the past year. That can hardly
be a bad thing. A er all, new ranges added
a total of £10.8m to the market, according to
Kantar’s gures.Hot competition
But more brands, more NPD and fewer shop-
pers can only mean one thing: tougher com-
petition. That’s perhaps why six of the top 10
baking brands are down this year [Nielsen 52
w/e 18 May 2019]. Together, they lost a com-
bined £8m.
So to survive in this crowded market, inno-
vation has to capture a real shopper need.
Betty Crocker believes it has found just
that with its Mug Treats, which launched in
January 2018 and have just been on the end
of a fresh £800k marketing push.
As the name suggests, the range includes
mixes that can be baked in a mug. Easier still,
the only piece of equipment you need is your
microwave. It’s part of Betty Crocker’s strategy“We know that shoppers
nd the baking aisle
underwhelming andhard to navigate”