Diet products are intended to reduce. However, retailers and manufacturers were busy trying to fatten up sales of frozen diet entrees and dinners in the weeks following New Year's.
January is typically an ideal time to emphasize diet items because many people are trying to keep their resolutions of eating healthy foods or losing weight. Retailers contacted by SN said they have been counting on this trend in weight-consciousness and healthy eating to help invigorate their frozens volume and kick off the first quarter of 1994.
A sampling of newspaper ads from around the nation shows grocers did some reducing on retail prices of frozen entrees and dinners.
Eagle Food Centers, Milan, Ill., for example, ran an ad in the Chicago Tribune featuring 50% off Lean Cuisine entrees.
The Food Lion chain ran an "Eat Right" ad in the Jan. 5 issue of the Dallas Morning News. The ad featured Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers, Healthy Choice and Budget Gourmet Light entrees, as well as Food Lion's own sour cream and yogurt.
Kroger Co.'s Atlanta marketing area ran a full-page ad on Jan. 6 in the Atlanta Journal/ Atlanta Constitution urging customers to "Make the Healthy Choice in the New Year." Healthy Choice dinners and Healthy Choice Classics were advertised at two for $5, while Healthy Choice Quick Meals were listed at three for $5.
While frozen food buyers at those three chains declined to comment on sales results, other retailers contacted by SN reported strong sales of frozen meals so far this year, and especially in
January.
All retailers reported increasing advertising space devoted to these items in that month, running anywhere from a couple of extra lines to an entire additional page.
A buyer for a Southern grocery chain, who asked not to be identified, said he was seeing brisk sales of frozen entrees and dinners by the end of January.
"I don't have the numbers yet, but we easily sold 30% more than we sell most months, probably more. We did some heavy newspaper advertising and had some good prices. We even had some demos in the stores. Diet products always do well in the beginning of the year. Everybody has made their resolutions to lose weight.
"Premium, health-conscious dinners are doing well. I'm not talking about diet dinners per se, where people just look at calories," the buyer added. "There's a trend toward Budget Gourmet Lite and Healthy and products like that. Things are very spread out. It's not just Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine now."
"Diet dinners are doing well," said Ray Mar, a buyer for Jumbo Markets, Sacramento, Calif. "The whole month of January is a major push, because it is basically diet month. If you look at the diet plans like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, you'll see January is the time they push hardest to get new members. They're trying to entice the same people we're trying to get in our stores."
One of Mar's neighbors to the south, Dean Allen, a buyer for Petrini Markets in San Rafael, Calif., said "diet products always do well this time of year." He said his stores ran sales on Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice.
"Lean Cuisine, in particular, picked up," said J. Thomas Outlaw Jr., director of frozen food for Ingles Markets, Black Mountain, N.C. "Weight Watchers didn't do all that well, but they didn't promote as much either."
Gerald Mashburn, a buyer for Piggly Wiggly in Calhoun, Ga., said sales of all diet products are rising. "They're really coming on. In one of our stores, we're creating a whole section for diet foods, from all departments. We're also going to keep them in the areas we had them. We've seen a big increase and think it will continue."
It seems major manufacturers have made a resolution of their own -- aggressive promotion. Among the most active were Stouffer's Lean Cuisine and ConAgra's Healthy Choice.
"Celebrate Great Taste" is the theme of Lean Cuisine's three-month promotion kicked off in January. It features heavy advertising and rebates of up to $10 for Lean Cuisine purchases.
