Frozen food chain Oops has created a range of 300 lines that it hopes to supply to other retailers, from convenience stores to high street discounters.
The business said it would allow any retailer to offer a frozen range at own-label prices.
Oops Food Clearance opened its first store in Bolton in 2020 and now has nine stores in the Midlands and north of England. It is the retail operation of supplier KP Frozen Foods, based in Birkenhead.
Oops’ speciality is selling surplus stock no longer required by the retailer it was originally intended for, often due to oversupply or a packaging or specification error. KPFF repackages and the food, removing the original branding, before it goes on sale in stores.
The lineup of 300 products for other retailers consists of tertiary brands created by the business along with some well-known brands such as Young’s and Aunt Bessie’s, said Noel Davis, founder & CEO of KPFF and Oops.
Oops has partnered with a commercial refrigeration manufacturer to provide retailers with a way to buy or rent freezers. It has also created a website where retailers will be able to reorder stock, which KPFF will deliver.
The service would provide retailers with a “fully integrated ‘direct to store’ supply chain solution” for frozen food, said Davis, who has variety discounters in particular in his sights.
Poundland has rolled out frozen food to hundreds of stores following its 2020 acquisition of Fultons Foods, while B&M’s ownership of Heron Foods provides it with a frozen range for its core stores. Home Bargains also has a frozen range.
However, many other variety discounters have yet to enter the frozen food market, which in 2021 was worth £800m more as a category than before the pandemic, according to Kantar data.
“Food prices are rocketing all over the place and there is going to be huge growth in frozen,” said Davis.
“We’ve developed an entire frozen food range, not in Oops packaging but under tertiary brands.
“All a retailer will have to do is install the freezers and we would supply direct to store and they would use our online system to order stock for the next day. They would simply buy or rent a freezer, put it in a corner of their store and have a frozen range to compete with any discounter in the UK. And they could do it overnight.”
The service includes the provision of a ‘food safety manual’ and ‘store trading diary’ to help retailers who have not sold frozen food before, according to Davis.
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