Tesco Finest Free From Carrot Cake
Who: Tesco
What: Finest Free From Carrot Cake
Where: Ambient cakes
When: Launched May 2015
How much: £3
Why: Part of Tesco’s premium Finest range, this wheat and gluten-free cake is made with rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour, filled and topped with cream cheese frosting and decorated with walnuts. The retailer is looking to tap the boom in the free-from market, which has risen 26.9% year on year to £455m, with ambient baked goods up 22.2% [Kantar Worldpanel 29 March].
Consumer verdict: This was positioned as a mainstream offer and, tested among those without dietary restrictions, was rated above average for all key measures except ‘value for money’. Many testers were pleasantly surprised that it was not significantly different to the standard offer, prompting comments including “good consistency”, though some found the cream cheese icing too cheesy or sweet. It achieved an overall score one point below the category average. Some 63% of respondents said they would consider it an occasional purchase to offer when entertaining.
Pre-trial purchase: 35%
Post-trial purchase: 56%
Better than what’s out there: 46%
New and different: 33%
Overall score: 38/50
What is Fast Foodfax?
It is a subscriber service that has been running for more than 30 years, offering consumer assessments of new products and allowing comparisons with more than 17,000 products from our database. It is objective, impartial and totally independent, and each product is assessed using original consumer feedback from respondents across the UK. See here for further information. Fast Foodfax is prepared by Cambridge Market Research, which works closely with The Grocer magazine on a variety of projects including the consumer judging element of the The Grocer’s Own-label Food & Drink Awards and New Product Awards.
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