Earlier this year, Roamler, a Dutch crowdsourcing platform, introduced the follow-on to its Soft Fruit Monitor: the Tomato Monitor. It gives a complete overview of European stores' tomato data in one clear dashboard. Roamler launched the weekly monitor in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom, with the Belgian, Polish, and French markets being added to the list of countries. There are also plans to expand to Scandinavia.
For ten years now, Roamler has been providing fruit and vegetable chain parties with detailed information and photos via a smartphone community. It has since launched subscription models for soft fruits, fruit-vegetables, and exotics. Roamler's shoppers, who take photos of products and record all possible data from price, country of origin, brands, packaging form, and shelf positioning, take note of everything.
A few months ago, a new parameter, quality, was added to both the Soft Fruit and Tomato monitors. "We ask our 'Roamlers' to rate each product's quality on a scale of one to ten. We, of course, realize that this is a subjective judgment. But we do so many visits that it does say something about the common denominator and thus gives a good picture of consumer quality perception. Our subscribers also say all the data's quality has developed very well," explains Christiaan Rijnhout.
"These quality ratings yield very interesting findings." For example, the data from weeks 37-39 showed that in the TOV and vine cocktail tomato segments of the 198 branches of the German supermarket chain stores the Roamlers visited, three suppliers stood out by far. Tomatoes from Fresh Solutions, Theeuwen Trostomatenkwekerij, both Dutch companies, and the German Reichenau-Gemuse-Vertrieb were rated best.
"We also know which suppliers were rated worst, but I'd rather not share that. If you subscribe to the Tomato Monitor, you can check all the data weekly. Companies from the entire chain, from seed breeding companies to grower associations, packaging companies, exporters, and retailers, subscribe to the Tomato Monitor. Thanks to these monitors, they have the most up-to-date data at their fingertips. They can easily spot trends, which strengthens their positions," concludes Christiaan.
For more information:
Roamler Nederland
Christiaan Rijnhout
20 NSDM Plein
1033 WC, Amsterdam, NL
Tel.: +31 (0) 615 294 869
Email: christiaan.rijnhout@roamler.com
Website: www.roamler.nl