Birds Eye is rolling out its Chicken Shop and Goodfella’s ranges to hot counters at 340 Morrisons stores.
The company said it was “stepping out of the freezer aisle” with the move, which will see several SKUs cooked and sold ready to eat.
“By offering our Chicken Shop favourites and new Goodfella’s products hot and ready to eat, we’re showcasing the quality, flavour, and creativity behind frozen food in a whole new way,” said Claire Sutton, marketing director at Birds Eye UK & Ireland.
“Being able to engage shoppers at additional touchpoints on their journey, such as the hot counter, is a fantastic evolution for the frozen category – and one we’re proud to be leading at Birds Eye,” she added.
The Morrisons’ hot counter lineup from Birds Eye includes: Chicken Shop Hash Brown Potato Bites, Chicken Shop Hot Honey Wings, Birds Eye Mini Potato Waffles, Goodfella’s Mozzarella Bites and Goodfella’s Pizza Bites. All products are non-HFSS.
Birds Eye launched its Chicken Shop range in 2018, and in September last year revamped the branding of the sub-brand as part of a wider packaging overhaul it dubbed its “biggest redesign in over a decade”. Seven products were added to the range late last year, with more being released in coming months.
The sub-brand was launched in response to the widening “pre-family” consumer cohort, said Steve Challouma, chief marketing officer of Birds Eye parent company Nomad Foods.
In the past, when young people “got a bit too cool” for fish fingers and potato waffles, the period before they became parents themselves and bought Birds Eye for their own children was much shorter than today, Challouma told the Mad//Fest marketing conference audience earlier this month.
“So there’s this extended time – it’s gone from five years to 11 years – where we’re not catching consumers, and this cohort is quite low on Birds Eye. We’re talking about 10% of our buyers are in this pre-family cohort,” he said,
The ‘pre-family’ consumer also snacks more and “there’s more informal eating, more light meals” whereas Birds Eye traditionally offers “main meal, teatime” products.
“If you don’t change, if you don’t move with the times, you become increasingly irrelevant. Our consumer set is slowly shrinking, if we don’t appeal to new audiences we’ll shrink with it,” Challouma said.
The company has the ambition for Chicken Shop to “be the number one chicken fakeaway brand”.
“It’s very much about targeting this younger audience that isn’t engaged with frozen food,” Challouma added.
In November, it ran an “immersive Chicken Shop pop-up” store in Shoreditch, London. It offered punters a menu full of loaded chicken burgers, wings and tenders, and a DJ set by singer and television personality Wes Nelson.
The sub-brand also began marketing in gaming, becoming the first fmcg brand to partner with EA FC, formerly known as FIFA. Fully branded bays have been rolled out in 500 Tesco stores featuring the entire range “to create a chicken shop within the freezer aisle”.
Challouma hinted at potential collaborations with sauce brands on co-branded products.
Birds Eye said the Chicken Shop range had seen “strong performance” in the frozen aisle, having grown 32.3% over the past year in value and 60% in volume, according to NIQ.
While ‘pre-family’ consumers make up around 10% of Birds Eye’s customers, nearly 40% of new buyers of Chicken Shop were from the demographic. Supermarket hot counters represent a “new channel” for the sub-brand, Challouma said.
“We’re delighted to be working with Morrisons on this exciting project,” Sutton added. “Their support has been instrumental in helping us reach more consumers with the great taste and convenience of our Chicken Shop and Goodfella’s ranges.”
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