Supermarket Perimeter - January 2021 - 19

Trend Watching

WEGMANS, AFRICA STUDIO @STOCK.ADOBE.COM

FRESH BAKERY continues to reinvent itself.
During a recent webinar, " Top Trends in Fresh:
A Year in Review as We Look to the Future, " IRI
and the Food Marketing Institute dove deeper
into how fresh food has performed throughout
the pandemic, including anticipated trends for
the winter and new ideas for 2021 and beyond.
" As the US turned to new normal in August
and September, we saw some very interesting
things. Bread is doing really well, " said Jonna
Parker, IRI fresh center of excellence.
The perimeter bakery is signiﬁcantly smaller
than the bakery aisle and results were mixed.
As seen throughout the pandemic, the more
functional items of breads and rolls are mostly
trending above year-ago levels.
But desserts, sweet snacks and breakfast
items continued to be below 2019 sales trends.
These results are affected by the closing down
of bulk, self-serve sections as well as the very
different nature of celebrations and gatherings
amid the pandemic.
" Shortened time in store and shoppers'
desire to focus on their essential, list items are
also hampering the browsability that anchors
especially the sweeter, impulse elements of the
fresh perimeter bakery, " Parker said.
For starters, Parker pointed out a need to
further deﬁne " what is fresh, " because the
industry employs a variety of deﬁnitions. She
advocates a " fact-based view of perishables
deﬁnitions. " This would include the
following steps:
x Use retailers' and suppliers' own systems to
analyze which items they consider bakery
and other fresh departments.
x Let numbers guide the deﬁnition.
x Where the data is not deﬁnitive, leverage a

governance board of unbiased suppliers,
retailers and industry leaders.
x Build this industry standard in an easily
accessible, ongoing data set for sales and
shoppers.
Unlike the center store bakery, the perimeter
bakery performance by area is much more
mixed. Only two areas reported increases,
including croissants and tortillas/wraps and
ﬂatbreads.
October was the ﬁrst month that fresh
perimeter bread fell below last year's levels.
What's next? Everyday demand continues to
slowly erode back to 2019 levels. However,
with renewed shelter-in-place restrictions and
rising COVID-19 cases, retail sales may swing
up again in the next few months.

Add theater
One of the more effective ways to trigger
higher impulse sales involves the ability to
bring theater into your bakery department.
Cupcakes and mini cake products, such as
cake shots, have consistently been outpacing
other products for the past several years,
according to research from the International
Dairy Deli Bakery Association (IDDBA).
Lawrence Foods, Elk Grove Village, Ill.,
recommends its ﬂavored Decocrèmes® icings
as a convenient tool to bring creative options
into your cake case.
For instance, Pink Champagne
Decocrèmes® is a delicious and versatile icing
that is perfect for any celebration. Lawrence
Foods recommends pairing with Strawberry EZ
Squeeze® Filling for a classic ﬂavor combination.
To make a pink champagne cake, ﬁll your
cake with Strawberry EZ Squeeze® Filling and

Scooped Cookie Dough Bar plans
to open 17 Scooped locations
in California, Nevada, Arizona,
Georgia and Florida in January
2021. As the pandemic continues
to force restaurants and eateries
to redeﬁne how they conduct
business, Scooped has fully
embraced a convenient, costeffective virtual kitchen model to
better reach its rapidly expanding
cookie-dough customer base
through new physical locations that
are accessed online.
Scooped offers a growing menu
of delicious, safe-to-eat gourmet
cookie dough ﬂavors - including
gluten free and vegan options -
that can be eaten directly from
the bowl.
" We're absolutely thrilled to be
opening so many locations in such a
relatively short time, " says Scooped
owner Matt Weber. " Although
2020 presented a lot of challenges
for us, we're moving into 2021 with
an extremely hopeful outlook. "
Using Cloud Kitchens' lower-cost,
virtual kitchen model, Scooped has
set up in California, Colorado, and
throughout the East - all in prime
residential areas. Each location
is purely focused on delivery
and pickup, and all use delivery
platforms like UberEats and
GrubHub to get cookie dough to
local customers.
A majority of customers order
online at this point, so these new
virtual kitchen locations are fully
equipped and staffed kitchen
spaces where customers can easily
order treats via their computers
and cell phones.

supermarketperimeter.com

JANUARY 2021 - 19
Supermarket Perimeter - January 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Supermarket Perimeter - January 2021
