Do you feel like having a nice, home-made cocktail? Fresh pack developments don’t end with meals. They keep evolving. The Dutch supermarket chain, Jumbo, has noticed a strong upward trend. Since the coronavirus broke out, soup and meal pack sales have increased even more. The unprocessed assortment’s importance remains unchanged.
“The COVID-19 pandemic not only increased the demand more non-perishable good. There's also more demand for fresh products, like fruit and vegetables. That’s probably because more people have time to cook and focus on their health. Jumbo want to make tasty, healthy nutrition more accessible to everyone,” says Jumbo’s media spokesperson, Michiel de Ruijter.
“With our fresh meal packs, we respond to our customers’ increasing need for healthy, convenient ideas. We’ve seen a significant upward trend in fresh meal pack sales. This increased even during the coronavirus outbreak. These kits aren’t only convenient. They also inspire people to try new dishes.”
Jumbo has an extensive, varied fruit and vegetable assortment. Fresh packs make up part of this. They want to assist shoppers in making tasty, healthy choices. Michiel says, “With these packs, we inspire our customers. They can cook with fresh, healthy products and eat enough vegetables at the same time.”
“An extensive, unprocessed fruit, vegetable, and ready-to-eat range also remains no less vital. Shoppers make choices based on different needs. The various kits, as well as unprocessed foods, play crucial roles in this. With these fresh packs, we try to respond as well as possible to our consumers’ wishes.”
Jumbo regularly adds new fresh packs to its assortment. These aren’t always evening meals, though. For example, this summer, people could buy two different cocktails kits. There was a mojito pack which included limes, lemons, kiwi, sugar, and mint. And a sangria pack with oranges, apples, lemon, mint, and a cinnamon stick. Jumbo has a guacamole kit too. It contains avocado, tomato, limes, chilli, shallots, and garlic.
In week 17, this Dutch supermarket introduced a vegetable variety concept. It had three different vegetable preparation kits. There is, for example, one with runner beans, lemon, tomatoes, shallots, garlic, and a little bag of almond shavings. The other packs were for carrots and asparagus. These packs were available online and instore.
Jumbo has been running an online trial since November 2019. They’ve been offering meal boxes prepared by Chef Ali. These contain all the fresh ingredients needed for a complete meal and a recipe for how to make it. Ingredients include fresh pasta, rice and bread as well as vegetables. There’s also meat, chicken, or fish, and fresh herbs. The supermarket says it will remove these from its assortment at some stage.
“We continuously see how we can change or improve our range and its presentation. We adapt this to our shoppers’ needs. That also applies to our fruit and vegetable department. There, we make regular, almost weekly, changes. We base these changes on the season and our customers’ demands. Think of asparagus in the spring. Smaller portions and vegetables are increasingly finding their way onto Jumbo’s shelves too. These include mini-cauliflower and broccoli. It seems these also contribute to less food wastage,” concludes Michiel.
More information
Michiel de Ruijter
Press representative Jumbo Supermarket
pers@jumbo.com