young's simply bake

Young’s Seafood is set to take on Birds Eye’s Inspirations range with a new line-up of ready to cook bake-in-a-tray frozen fish.

Simply Bake will go on sale in Asda and Tesco from October in four different variants: each contains two portions of responsibly sourced chunky cod topped with a broccoli mornay, Mediterranean, cheese & leek or Florentine-flavoured crust (rsp: £3/380g pack).

The new sub-brand was designed to reinvigorate the “heartland” frozen fish recipe category, Young’s said, which had seen sales slide 8% year on year [Nielsen 52 w/e April 2016]. It would also provide midweek meal inspiration and greater variety in frozen fish.

Young’s marketing director Yvonne Adam said Simply Bake recipes incorporated simple, quality ingredients for “feel good comfort food” and could be oven baked or microwaved.

The range, which is expected to roll out into other retailers from the new year, scored highly in consumer research and was targeted at attracting new younger shoppers and also lapsed shoppers back to frozen fish, Adam said.

“Listening to shoppers, we know people want more ways to enjoy fish and we hope to inspire people to love fish now and for generations to come with our latest innovation.”

The launch will be supported by a multi-channel digital and consumer PR campaign from the autumn using the theme of a “Young’s Great Bake Off” style event that will showcase the ease of midweek meal creation and meal planning, a Young’s spokeswoman added.

It comes as Birds Eye announced the expansion its Inspirations range with a raft of new SKUs this week backed by a £5.5m marketing spend, which will kick off in November and is also designed to promote midweek meal occasions.